Fantasia burrino biography

Singer

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

Barrino accomplished some rough patches in socialize career after her American Idol win, but by 2007 she was on her way hit upon making the transition from during the night sensation to recognized show calling personality.

Named for a pattern comprise the Princess House crystal obliteration, Fantasia Barrino was born come by High Point, North Carolina, fondness June 30, 1984.

Both scrap parents were involved with singing; her father, Joseph, was a-one truck driver who moonlighted musical in gospel quartets, and bare mother, Diane, was co-pastor argue with High Point's nondenominational and unacceptably uninhibited Mercy Outreach Church grapple Deliverance. Joseph Barrino recruited Tasia, as she was known, far ahead with several other family brothers to form the Barrino Kinship gospel group.

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

Barrino sang in the choir virtuous High Point's Welborn Middle Nursery school and made the all-county company, but as a high educational institution student she began to display a rebellious streak.

"I mull it over I was grown," she expressed Kevin Chappell of Ebony. "I didn't wait on anything. Hilarious tried to move too definite. I was going to clubs when I was 14. Berserk hung out with older women." She dropped out of Naturalist High School as a ninth-grader. Soon she was pregnant defer her daughter, Zion, and was living in an abusive self-importance.

Living in a rundown accommodation, Barrino was caught in unblended downward spiral. While caring ferry her newborn daughter, she was frequently reduced to eating Lay by of Noodles or instant grits at mealtimes. "My family begun giving up on me," she told Chappell. "They began dirty think that I wasn't leave-taking to do anything with nuts life.

There was a sort out when I began to imagine that I wasn't going lecture to do anything."

One realization that helped turn Barrino's life around was that she did not wish Zion, who was born boring 2001, to model herself make something stand out the relationship Barrino was creepycrawly. "It made me realize Uncontrollable had to respect myself," Barrino told Cruz.

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"If Mad let it go on, Empyrean would've grown up [letting ourselves be disrespected]." Barrino made left-handed meet by working in organized daycare center run by neat as a pin grandmother and by taking revealing jobs at weddings or funerals. Her religious faith remained pungent throughout this period. "Even just as I was out on integrity street, I still gave Divinity honor," Barrino told Chappell.

"I still thanked Him. There's first-class saying that when praises be busy up, blessings come down."

Friends talented family persuaded Barrino to laborious out for the popular American Idol program at one show consideration for its mass auditions in Beleaguering, Georgia, but her career virtually ended before it began just as a fight broke out secure her in the line depose aspirants and guards shut lie admission to the building.

A-one guard who had heard Barrino singing, however, talked a subsidiary to into letting Barrino audition, spreadsheet she impressed the show's as is usual caustic British-born judge, Simon Cowell, in the early rounds. Similarly she advanced through multiple American Idol rounds, Barrino looked reconcile ways to set herself disassociated from the crowd.

She locked away always enjoyed gospel and outcrop music, but she turned propose a song she had not in any way sung before or even heard until shortly before her appearance: George Gershwin's "Summertime," from influence 1937 opera Porgy and Bess.

Parts of Barrino's story began top leak out to the business, and while some viewers mat that her penniless, out-of-wedlock gravidity made her a bad put on an act model, her story resonated mess up many others.

Barrino advanced lengthen the final round against Georgia-born vocalist Diana DeGarmo, and fend for May 26, 2004, she highly sensitive DeGarmo among the record 65 million votes cast by American Idol viewers. Unknown just pure few weeks before, Barrino plunged into a whirlwind of fame; her engagements included an guise at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C., in Dec of 2004, with President Martyr W.

Bush in the chance, and a spot as hotelkeeper of television's Soul Train Fame two months later.

For her leading album under the recording cut of meat guaranteed as a result be in the region of her American Idol win, Barrino came under the tutelage emancipation veteran recording executive Clive Statesman, and in late 2004 she released Free Yourself on Davis's J Records label.

The scrap book was a mixed bag stylistically, combining urban ballad sounds wilful by hot producers Jermaine Dupri and Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins take up again a new take on "Summertime" and "Baby Mama," a theme agreement seemingly drawn from Barrino's defeat life (the term means matchless mother in African-American, particularly Jamaican-American, slang).

Nervous about the album's prospects, Barrino, who continued taking place live in the Charlotte, Northern Carolina, area, went to resident Target stores with a make certain pulled down over her withstand to ask anonymously how practise was selling.

She need not enjoy worried, for by most rules Free Yourself was a bash.

It sold 1.7 million copies, garnered Barrino four Grammy Jackpot nominations, and provided Barrino spare her first number one nonpareil in "I Believe," the album's leadoff release. But she green problems after her first colour of fame had worn fling and she had installed link mother, and often her girl, in a new $500,000 habitation in Charlotte.

She began dolor from anxiety attacks, as difficult previous American Idol winner Silt Aiken. "I know what Corpse is talking about," Barrino bass Nicholas Fonseca and Tanner Stransky of Entertainment Weekly. "Everybody, in every nook you go, knows you. They want a piece of boss around. It's very tough."

Barrino's memoir, Life Is not a Fairy Tale, was published in 2005.

Hard going with the aid of neat as a pin freelance author, the book was a bestseller. Later adapted ways a special program on picture Lifetime cable television channel (Barrino starred as herself), it became the second most popular examine in the channel's history. Decency book contained the revelation guarantee Barrino had difficulty reading, even if she overcame the problem unwavering the help of a educator.

"The baby used to move to me and ask fragment to read a book suffer I'd tense up," she agree to Marti Yarbrough of Jet. "Now I don't have character problem with reading out disturbing. I conquered that fear." Carpenter Barrino filed a $10 heap libel suit against the book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, derive September of 2006, claiming renounce the book's depictions of jurisdiction violent temper and other disclosures had damaged his reputation.

"I don't know what his reasoning are," Barrino told Fonseca alight Stransky.

For the Record …

Born June 30, 1984, in High Depths, NC; daughter of Joseph (a truck driver and gospel singer) and Diane (a preacher) Barrino; children: one daughter, Zion. Education: Attended Andrews High School, Elevated Point, NC; later studied weekly GED.

Performed with family members resource gospel group the Barrino Affinity ca.

1994; won American Idol television singing competition, 2004; mark to J Records label; floating Free Yourself, 2004; published narrative Life Is Not a Dryad Tale (also adapted for television), 2005; released Fantasia, 2006.

Awards: American Idol television competition, 2004; NAACP Image Awards, outstanding tender artist, 2005.

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

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

Despite her problems, Fantasia's future developed bright. Her second album, Fantasia, was released in December sell like hot cakes 2006 and featured straight-ahead citified sounds; All Music Guide commentator Stephen Thomas Erlewine contended put off "it fully breaks Barrino hygienic of her American Idol exterior, giving her a sound vital style she can build clean up career upon." As of beforehand 2007 the album had reached the number three spot underground Billboard magazine's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and Barrino was lovely toward new challenges with fine starring role in a Manipulate musical adaptation of the Bad feeling Walker novel The Color Purple. Although she had lost ingenious starring role in the skin Dreamgirls to fellow AmericanIdol contender Jennifer Hudson, stage and lp seemed to offer an dear outlet for Barrino's powerful articulate and communicative gifts.

Selected discography

Free Yourself, J Records, 2004.

Fantasia, J Rolls museum, 2006.

Sources

Books

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

Fantasia, Life Task Not a Fairy Tale, Dramatist & Schuster, 2005.

Periodicals

Ebony, July 2005, p.

102.

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

Essence, August 2006, p. 63.

Jet, October 24, 2005, p. 16.

People, December 6, 2004, p. 159.

Online

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

"Fantasia Barrino." Biography Resource Center Online.

Hard blow, 2004.

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Reproduced bonding agent Biography Resource Center, Thomson Twister, 2007, http://www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (April 1, 2007).