Ashanti Shequoiya Douglas (October 13th, 1980-) is a singer, song-writer, record producer, dancer, and actress who played Dorothy Gale in the 2005 TV movie The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. She is most famous for her eponymous debut album, which featured the hit song "Foolish", and sold over 503,000 copies in its first week of release throughout the U.S. in April 2002. She is currently working on her own publishing company titled Written Entertainment. In 2009, she played the role of Dorothy again in a revival of The Wiz.
Biography[]
Born and raised on Long Island, New York both of her parents worked as computer specialists though their backgrounds were in entertainment--her mother, Tina, danced and her father, Kincaid, sang. From the beginning her parents groomed Ashanti to follow in their footsteps. "I couldn't find a birth announcement that was sufficient for the way I felt about my child, so I made my own up," Ashanti's mother told MTV. "It had all kinds of musical notes on it, and it said that she was gonna be a dancer. We said, 'Dancing to the boogie woogie beats of the lyrics written by her dad.'" She studied dance at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center and began dancing at the age of three. "I did tap, jazz, modern, ballet, African, everything," she told Music & Media. She performed in famed venues like Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater and danced in the Disney television film Polly.
Ashanti seemed destined for a career in dance until it was discovered she could sing. "Singing was kind of accidental," Ashanti told MTV. Her mother had told her to do some chores and turn off the radio. Twelve year old Ashanti obeyed and went to work, singing to herself. "[My mom] comes storming down the steps: 'Didn't I tell you to turn the radio off?' I'm like, 'Yeah, that wasn't the radio. I was just singing.'" Her mother continued, telling MTV, "She sang Mary J. Blige's 'Reminisce' and I'll never forget it. I put her in a couple of talent shows and she came in first place. Once I found out she could sing, it was a wrap." Less than two years later Ashanti signed her first record contract with Jive Records. That deal went nowhere, in part because Ashanti wanted to write her own songs, something the record company did not like. A few years later at 17, Ashanti moved to Atlanta to work with Noontime, a subsidiary of mega-label Epic. That partnership fizzled out as well and she was soon back in New York, finishing up high school and starting to plan for her future. Of the failed deals she told Music & Media, "It was all like a character builder, I got a chance to learn a lot of things very early."
Despite her budding career, Ashanti kept pace with her schoolwork. She was an honor student in English and belonged to the English club where she began writing poetry. She was also a standout on the track team and brought home quite a few medals for her school. Her academic and athletic talents drew the attention of both Princeton University and Hampton University, the latter of which offered her a scholarship. She turned it down, deciding to give music another shot.
Ashanti's manager gained a meeting for her with Irv Gotti, the CEO and co-founder of Murder Inc. At first it seemed an unlikely pairing. The label had a street thug edge--its artists were called "murderers" and its website opened with the sound of gunshots--and Ashanti was a sweet-faced honor student who sang R&B. However, as her mom told People, "She looks innocent, but if there's something she wants, she'll get it." What she wanted was to fuse her R&B style with harder rap and hip-hop sounds. She credits singer Mary J. Blige with that influence. "I didn't want to sing only slow songs and I didn't want to be spittin' rhymes," she is quoted on the Def Jam website. Gotti was impressed and she soon signed a deal to become the label's first R&B artist.
Ashanti went into the label's Greenwich Village studio and began to work on her debut album, Ashanti. She wrote the lyrics for all twelve songs, penning many of them right in the studio. "When you perform your own records, records you wrote, for me, the emotion I feel is deeper than when I sing someone else's words," she said on Teenpeople.com. With those songs she also hoped to touch other people. The song scorched through the charts, landing at number one. Around same time she appeared alongside another rapper, Fat Joe, on his What's Luv? single. Again her sultry cooing played perfectly off the gangsta-fueled rap and the song also tore up the charts. Meanwhile, a song she wrote for Jennifer Lopez, «Ain't it Funny,» also began climbing towards the top ten. Murder Inc. promptly released Foolish, the first single off of Ashanti and it also soared. By April of 2002, Foolish was holding the number one spot, What's Luv? was at number two, and Ain't it Funny was three.
In 2005, Ashanti focused more on her acting career, making her feature film acting debut in the film Coach Carter alongside Samuel L. Jackson, as well as starring as Dorothy Gale in the made-for-television film The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, which pulled in nearly 8 million viewers when it premiered. She sung "When I'm with You" for the film which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Music and Lyrics category. In Coach Carter, she played a pregnant teenager named Kyra who has to decide whether or not to abort her unborn child. The movie opened at number-one at the U.S. box office, eventually grossing $67 million domestically. Later in 2005, Ashanti was invited to Oprah Winfrey's Legends Ball, which honored some of the most influential and legendary African American women of the twentieth century in the fields of art, entertainment, and civil rights. In December 2005, Ashanti released a remix album of Concrete Rose titled Collectables by Ashanti. The album was an opportunity for her to fulfill her contract with Def Jam (and have the option of working with another label), and did not fare well on the charts.
In 2006, she starred in the teen comedy John Tucker Must Die, which opened and peaked at number three at the U.S. box office (competing with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Miami Vice) and grossed $68,818,076 worldwide. In 2007, she played a supporting role in the action film Resident Evil: Extinction (2007).
Ashanti headlined the cast of The Wiz in the New York City Center Encores! Summer Stars staging from June 12 to July 5, 2009. Ashanti's role as Dorothy has since received mixed reviews from critics as most praised her vocals but was less pleased with her acting ability. BET and Entertainment Weekly both praised the singer's performance as The New York Post and New York Times gave lukewarm reviews. Though the first night was sold out, some of the other shows were unable to follow its success. On October 27, 2008, Ashanti took part in The Yellow Brick Road Not Taken, a one night only concert to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Wicked, featuring songs written by Stephen Schwartz, that were cut from the show.
Gallery[]
Discography[]
- Studio albums
- Ashanti (2002)
- Chapter II (2003)
- Ashanti's Christmas (2003)
- Concrete Rose (2004)
- The Declaration (2008)
- Braveheart (2014)