hellooooo my gorgeous wonderful people.. yes i know about time i got on this damn thing haha yayyy!!!! 2 pats on the back for me.. told u i procrastinate.. nah but trully though.. i been on the road.. i'm currently in buffalo, i performed at a club called dragon last nite near niagra falls .. so we had to cross the border into canada.. it was a great nite.. there was a couple of guys that were booin.. i was like wat the?? haha but i found out it wasn't on me.. jus some political jealousy.. watever.. yes peoples.. even in the industry people can be childish wow.. so other then that the crowed was HOT! wat peeps were singin "i fell in love with the dj" yayyyyy!!!!! i was like yayyyy!!!!! hahahah and then i was like yayyy!!! hahaha

Curtains open: In walks Che'nelle, the balanced diet personified. An exuberant songstress of entrancing yet accessible proportions, the twenty-three year old American transplant simply cannot be marginalized and indeed refuses to be defined. She relishes country music but breathes R&B; she is a student of dancehall but has a degree in pop. The true definition of a genre-buster, it's only natural then that the tunes on her Capitol Records debut, Things Happen For A Reason, is every bit as motley as her lineage, personality, musical taste and upbringing.

"Everybody's influenced now," Che'nelle proclaims. "It's about everything being mixed, it's an evolution. And it's exciting and new-that's what the future's about."

The beginning of the future: Che'nelle (nee Lim) was born to parents of mixed heritage (Malaysian, Indian and Dutch) in a quaint and little known village in Sabah, Malaysia-Kota Kinabalu. Her most cherished hobby there was karaoke. At the age of ten though, Che'nelle and her parents moved to the relatively vibrant city of Perth in Australia. It was nothing like she was used to, especially as it was faster, and most of the people didn't look like her. Again though, she gravitated towards the karaoke scene. Karaoke was very much a safe haven-an umbrella under which she came into her own; where she could sing and hone her craft; where there were no boundaries. Here, she could channel the emotional truth of say, Dolly Parton, or the sultry sting of Julio Iglesias even.

"With karaoke it was all about the passion" the agile singer acknowledges. "Whichever artist it was, it was about the passion, the feeling." Does sheer passion though hold enough currency to translate her trans-eclectic sensibility to Mr. and Mrs. Record buyer? "Definitely," Che'nelle asserts instinctively. "But I also feel like a I'm a mixture of plenty things and so I can connect with a lot of people regardless of whether I went through exactly what they went through or not. I've got music that'd connect them to me. I'm an international person that delivers her music with feeling."

The proof's in the pudding: While still working on her self-produced demo in her excruciatingly modest bedroom studio, Che'nelle uploaded her recordings on to her now renowned myspace page (www.myspace.com/chenelleworld). Amidst the countless hits of her page, her now manager - radio veteran and club DJ of 17 years - Sir Charles Dixon, stumbled on what was too good to be true. "When I first saw her page I was bit skeptical because her picture was amazing!" Dixon excitedly recollects. "So, I asked to hear some demos and she sent me six tracks. After I played them, I immediately started planning a flight to Australia!"

The rest was and is history in the making.

In late 2005, a meeting at the then Virgin Records was thereafter almost immediately facilitated. The chairman of the label and longtime music business baron, Jason Flom, refrained from much a rhetoric dance and committed to signing her immediately. "The fact that she wrote and produced her demo made me say: 'Wow, this girl is a very unusual talent!' Her voice was very distinctive and her exotic looks immediately separated her from her peers. Plus, she could dance and had tremendous style like the star she is."

The fervent faith of Flom and even other industry onlookers like Swiss Beats and Sean Garrett is not lost on Che'nelle--she bares and shakes off the pressure like an executive chef. On Things Happen For A Reason, where she either wrote or co-wrote every single song, the spunky vocalist serves up a hell of a gumbo platter chockfull of rug cutters to ditties of the cherubic hue.

"Right Back" which is very much a sparse affair has Che'nelle amalgamating strength with vulnerability. Over mid-tempo, crisp drum-programming and hypnotic keys courtesy of James Poyser (Mariah Carey, Common, Lauryn Hill, etc.), Che'nelle earnestly suggests to her man that they return to when things were oh so simple: "I really miss what we had/And wanna get us back/You never took it personal/Before I was your girl/Let's get right back to where we belong." But at the drop of a just-purchased hat Miss Che'nelle doesn't hesitate to pull us out of our cozy hammock and on to bumpier ride with the club-ready "Hurry Up." Produced by the aforementioned hitman, Garrett (Beyonce, Pussycat Dolls, Ciara, etc.), Che'nelle spares neither kick nor snare: armed with a bordering-on-jovial rap delivery and her best pompom impression, she teasingly dares her suitor to step his game up, to take advantage of the ticking clock. The pressure.

The cheekiness raises its head even higher with the Rich Harrison (Usher, Christina Aguilera, Diddy, etc.) helmed "Pops Up," a funky-as-hell, break beat-laden, poppish R&B gem. Here, Che'nelle very much in her element, is armed with the kind of innuendo that would have made Chaucer proud. Sounding fiercely liberated and channeling the spirit of Teena Marie with a dash of late 80s Whitney Houston, the spunky small town girl done good has fun with the premise of sitting on an interested suitor's lap and talking about "the first thing that pops up!" On the dancehall-charged "I Fell In Love The DJ" (laced by newcomer, Marcus Bell) however, it seems Che'nelle is putting her teasing days behind her. In her faux patois delivery, she professes her undying love for the man on the wheels of steel, however temporary!

This is what makes Che'nelle one to write home about again and again: Whether she's singing, rapping or chatting, it's all in her inherent ability to clearly and tunefully harness the most simple of truths and even the somewhat ridiculous - the very things our lives are really made of - and put them in a context all palatable, all sumptuous. "I'm all the way from Australia--from a place that's untainted," she reflects in her spicy lilt. "I'm the girl next door and that's why when I write songs it usually connects with a lot of people. I like to write about what people talk about but don't really sing about."

And like that, just like when she'd wrapped up a karaoke performance as a pre-teen, Che'nelle exits the stage--if only for the night. Curtains close.

 

Visit my website WWW.chenelle-world.com to hear my new single "I Fell In Love With The DJ"