Ashanti Douglas has worked with Ja Rule, Vita, Irv Gotti, and Fat Joe. Furthermore she's a singer/ songwriter/ actress/ dancer... all this at just 21 years old. She's the voice of Ja Rule's "Always On Time", Fat Joe's "What's Love", Big Pun's "How We Roll" and Vita's stylish cover of Madonna's "Justify My Love" as featured on the soundtrack to "The Fast And The Furious". Her own début single, "Foolish", samples the classic Debarge track "Stay With Me", the same hook that featured on the "One More Chance Remix" by Notorious B.I.G. Ashanti wrote all of the songs on her debut album, except for one that she co-wrote with Ja Rule, who is the only guest artist featured on the album.
The question is 'How did she get so far in the music biz at such a young age?'
"It's been an eight-and-a-half year struggle," says the 21-year-old Long Island native, who signed to Jive Records when she was just 14. "At first, my music was very pop. I was young; I wasn't hands-on with the project. I didn't want to play what we recorded for my friends." Her experience prompted her to be more involved in her music; fortunately, the girl could not only sing, but she could write as well. "I always took honors English classes, and I loved writing essays, poems and things," she recalls. "I used to win awards. It came naturally, so I started writing records.
"The most painful time for me was when I was in high school and I was accepted to college, had a couple of sponsors, a track scholarship," recalls Ashanti, "All of my friends were in school and I'm waiting at home for this to happen, like damn, what's going on? Everyone is asking me constantly what's happening. I had to wear hoodies when I left the house!"
What is a smooth R&B chick doing on a primarily rap label like Murder Inc., anyway? "In the studio, there's a big bulletin board; it has a bunch of bullet holes on it with names for each - Vita, Ja Rule, Charli Baltimore - and blood dripping from them," laughs Ashanti. "So I'm like, 'I can't get no bullet!' But me being girly-girly and them being hard - it balances out, and it's hot."
"When I first met Irv, he was like 'I don't do R&B,' " recalls Ashanti with a giggle, "But then he had me write to the Biggie beat. At first I didn?t really want to do it. It felt strange, but Irv told me to go ahead and was impressed with what I did. I certainly never expected the song (now titled "Foolish") to be a single. Irv said 'Let's just white-label it (release it to the streets) and see what happens.' And it just took off from there."
"Everyone expected a lot of collaborations," she says. "Especially coming from Murder Inc. - we can get Jay-Z, Nas, DMX, anybody to do anything. But we wanted to do the unexpected, so nobody was getting on that album. I wanted my brother on there, though, so we got Ja on one track."
