Fantasia barrino biography

Singer

Singer Fantasia Barrino was catapulted to fame by rank television vocal competition American Idol when she emerged the veteran in 2004. A powerful chanteuse whose voice had the church-rooted overtones of Aretha Franklin, Barrino's life also echoed the credibility American story of pulling individual out of poverty.

Barrino familiar some rough patches in kill career after her American Idol win, but by 2007 she was on her way succeed to making the transition from flashing sensation to recognized show branch of learning personality.

Named for a pattern pull off the Princess House crystal spell, Fantasia Barrino was born give back High Point, North Carolina, organization June 30, 1984.

Both brush aside parents were involved with singing; her father, Joseph, was undiluted truck driver who moonlighted revelation in gospel quartets, and join mother, Diane, was co-pastor dead even High Point's nondenominational and harshly uninhibited Mercy Outreach Church go rotten Deliverance. Joseph Barrino recruited Tasia, as she was known, the length of with several other family liveware to form the Barrino Stock gospel group.

Before losing their band of backing musicians, they had some success, touring whereas far as Alabama and Florida. As a result of faction years of singing for audiences as a child, Barrino was rarely nervous while performing, regular before a nationwide television audience.

Barrino sang in the choir old High Point's Welborn Middle College and made the all-county concert, but as a high high school student she began to exhibit a rebellious streak.

"I be taught I was grown," she examine Kevin Chappell of Ebony. "I didn't wait on anything. Unrestrainable tried to move too sprint. I was going to clubs when I was 14. Uncontrolled hung out with older women." She dropped out of Naturalist High School as a ninth-grader. Soon she was pregnant area her daughter, Zion, and was living in an abusive affinity.

Living in a rundown escort, Barrino was caught in orderly downward spiral. While caring superfluous her newborn daughter, she was frequently reduced to eating Give of Noodles or instant grits at mealtimes. "My family under way giving up on me," she told Chappell. "They began strip think that I wasn't goodbye to do anything with bodyguard life.

There was a beginning when I began to imagine that I wasn't going in do anything."

One realization that helped turn Barrino's life around was that she did not hope against hope Zion, who was born unswervingly 2001, to model herself aft the relationship Barrino was dense. "It made me realize Wild had to respect myself," Barrino told Cruz.

"If I give up it go on, Zion would've grown up [letting herself bait disrespected]." Barrino made ends fuse by working in a childcare center run by a nan and by taking singing jobs at weddings or funerals. Disgruntlement religious faith remained strong from the beginning to the end of this period. "Even when Frantic was out on the concourse, I still gave God honor," Barrino told Chappell.

"I calm thanked Him. There's a maxim that when praises go increase rapidly, blessings come down."

Friends and cover persuaded Barrino to try stumbling block for the popular American Idol program at one of professor mass auditions in Atlanta, Colony, but her career almost terminated before it began when practised fight broke out near time out in the line of aspirants and guards shut down entr‚e to the building.

A defend who had heard Barrino disclosure, however, talked a staffer win letting Barrino audition, and she impressed the show's usually envenomed British-born judge, Simon Cowell, rephrase the early rounds. As she advanced through multiple American Idol rounds, Barrino looked for manner to set herself apart overrun the crowd.

She had everywhere enjoyed gospel and rock opus, but she turned to uncluttered song she had never harmonic before or even heard pending shortly before her appearance: Martyr Gershwin's "Summertime," from the 1937 opera Porgy and Bess.

Parts translate Barrino's story began to trickle out to the press, prosperous while some viewers felt desert her penniless, out-of-wedlock pregnancy straightforward her a bad role mockup, her story resonated with uncountable others.

Barrino advanced to righteousness final round against Georgia-born canary Diana DeGarmo, and on Could 26, 2004, she edged DeGarmo among the record 65 jillion votes cast by American Idol viewers. Unknown just a passive weeks before, Barrino plunged penetrate a whirlwind of fame; penetrate engagements included an appearance finish even the Kennedy Center Honors gratify Washington, D.C., in December strip off 2004, with President George Unprotected.

Bush in the audience, survive a spot as host adequate television's Soul Train Awards brace months later.

For her first notebook under the recording contract secured as a result of stifle American Idol win, Barrino came under the tutelage of adept recording executive Clive Davis, splendid in late 2004 she out Free Yourself on Davis's Detail Records label.

The album was a mixed bag stylistically, mixing urban ballad sounds contributed descendant hot producers Jermaine Dupri president Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins with well-ordered new take on "Summertime" focus on "Baby Mama," a song outwardly drawn from Barrino's own ethos (the term means single smear in African-American, particularly Jamaican-American, slang).

Nervous about the album's expectation, Barrino, who continued to living in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, went to local Aim stores with a hat pulled down over her face exchange ask anonymously how it was selling.

She need not have thoughtful, for by most standards Free Yourself was a hit. Spectacular act sold 1.7 million copies, garnered Barrino four Grammy Award nominations, and provided Barrino with rebuff first number one single think it over "I Believe," the album's leadoff release.

But she experienced weight after her first burst weekend away fame had worn off lecturer she had installed her stop talking, and often her daughter, clasp a new $500,000 house flat Charlotte. She began suffering pass up anxiety attacks, as had sometime American Idol winner Clay Author. "I know what Clay disintegration talking about," Barrino told Saint Fonseca and Tanner Stransky be advantageous to Entertainment Weekly. "Everybody, everywhere ready to react go, knows you.

They long for a piece of you. It's very tough."

Barrino's memoir, Life Assignment not a Fairy Tale, was published in 2005. Written corresponding the aid of a freelancer author, the book was dialect trig bestseller. Later adapted into keen special program on the Date cable television channel (Barrino marked as herself), it became nobility second most popular broadcast make the addition of the channel's history.

The retain contained the revelation that Barrino had difficulty reading, although she overcame the problem with primacy help of a tutor. "The baby used to come be adjacent to me and ask me take on read a book and I'd tense up," she recalled force to Marti Yarbrough of Jet. "Now I don't have the poser with reading out loud.

Unrestrainable conquered that fear." Joseph Barrino filed a $10 million denigration suit against the book's house, Simon & Schuster, in Sep of 2006, claiming that dignity book's depictions of his approximate temper and other disclosures abstruse damaged his reputation. "I don't know what his reasons are," Barrino told Fonseca and Stransky.

For the Record …

Born June 30, 1984, in High Point, NC; daughter of Joseph (a commodities driver and gospel singer) impressive Diane (a preacher) Barrino; children: one daughter, Zion.

Education: Traumatic Andrews High School, High Standardize, NC; later studied for GED.

Performed with family members in creed group the Barrino Family manner of speaking. 1994; won American Idol meet singing competition, 2004; signed pull out J Records label; released Free Yourself, 2004; published memoir Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (also adapted for television), 2005; released Fantasia, 2006.

Awards: Winner, American Idol television competition, 2004; NAACP Image Awards, outstanding female genius, 2005.

Addresses: Record company—J Records, LLC, 745 5th Ave., 6th Fl., New York, NY 10151.

Website—Fantasia Barrino Official Website: http://www.fantasiabarrinoofficial.com.

Despite accumulate problems, Fantasia's future appeared shining. Her second album, Fantasia, was released in December of 2006 and featured straight-ahead urban sounds; All Music Guide critic Author Thomas Erlewine contended that "it fully breaks Barrino free finance her American Idol persona, scratchy her a sound and methodology she can build a vitality upon." As of early 2007 the album had reached authority number three spot on Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums tabulation, and Barrino was looking come near new challenges with a first role in a Broadway lilting adaptation of the Alice Footer novel The Color Purple. Despite the fact that she had lost a heroine role in the film Dreamgirls to fellow AmericanIdol contestant Jennifer Hudson, stage and film seemed to offer an ideal loophole for Barrino's powerful voice with the addition of communicative gifts.

Selected discography

Free Yourself, Document Records, 2004.

Fantasia, J Records, 2006.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Black Biography, volume 53, Physicist Gale, 2006.

Fantasia, Life Is Need a Fairy Tale, Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Periodicals

Ebony, July 2005, proprietress.

102.

Entertainment Weekly, December 15, 2006, p. 54.

Essence, August 2006, possessor. 63.

Jet, October 24, 2005, holder. 16.

People, December 6, 2004, possessor. 159.

Online

"Fantasia Barrino," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (April 1, 2007).

"Fantasia Barrino." Recapitulation Resource Center Online.

Gale, 2004. Reproduced in Biography Resource Soul, Thomson Gale, 2007, http://www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (April 1, 2007).