Celebrity Online NewsOnline Celebrity Gossip and News

Blu Cantrell
Background information
Birth name	Tiffany Cobb
Born	March 16, 1976 (1976-03-16) (age 32) Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Genre(s)	R&B, soul, neo soul, hip hop soul
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Years active	2001–present
Label(s)	Arista, Universal, Motown

Blu Cantrell (born Tiffany Cobb on March 16, 1976) is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter.

Biography

Early life

Blu Cantrell was born in Providence, Rhode Island to a Narragansett Indian and Cape Verdean father who also plays for the National Basketball Association and a jazz singer mother of Italian descent.

Music career

After several demos, recordings, and singing backup for artists such as Puff Daddy, Truth Hurts and Faith Evans, Cantrell was discovered by Red Zone Entertainment heads Tab and Laney Stewart in early 2000. The producers promptly placed her to Antonio "L.A." Reid who offered the singer a contract with his label Arista Records after a successful audition. Afterwards Cantrell went straight into recording sessions with Dallas Austin and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. In 2001, her debut album, So Blu, was released. The record saw major success when it peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 chart, eventually selling over 800,000 copies and going platinum in the United States. The album featured the hit single "Hit 'em Up Style (Oops!)", which peaked at number two on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and earned Cantrell a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance as well as an American Music Award nomination for Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist, both in 2002.

In 2003, Cantrell released her second album, Bittersweet. The record failed to reprise the success of her debut album but did earn Cantrell a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Album and managed to enter the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart at number eight. The album produced two hit singles, these being "Breathe" and "Make Me Wanna Scream", the former being a collaboration with Sean Paul. Though "Breathe" failed to reach the top fifty in the U.S., it peaked at number one for four weeks in the United Kingdom. It eventually became one of the most successful singles of the year in both Europe and Australia.

That same year, Cantrell was to appear in Playboy magazine (and would have been only the fourth African American woman to appear on the cover), but decided against it at the last minute (despite nude photos she posed for much earlier in her career having already been circulated) because "I felt it was going to make me more of a sex symbol and I didn't want anything to take away from the fact that I can sing".¹

In the summer of 2005, a music video for the previously unreleased song, "The Cha Cha", was produced, but never released because the production agreement over the song was unfairly advantageous to the producer and left Cantrell virtually out of the loop, so the video and the song were shelved. Also, in 2005, Hit 'em Up Style: Chart and Club Hits of Blu Cantrell was released without any promotion in the U.S. It was a compilation/remix album containing Cantrell's two biggest hits, some other tracks from her previous two albums and some remixes of tracks featured on the first albums. Cantrell continues to enjoy acclaim by European audiences.

Cantrell is referenced in the song "Make 'Em Mad" by B.G. and the Chopper City Boyz, from 2007's We Got This. Gar says:

Now that's a 745, my diamonds blue as Cantrell
I'm bumpin'. Everyday I'm hustlin' and they say (I can tell)

Cantrell is set to star in a play called Gossip, Lies & Secrets on September 29.² The stage play will tour in fifteen cities.

Cantrell appeared in NBC's Celebrity Circus. The first episode aired with a ninety-minute kick-off special on June 11, 2008.³ She was the first contestant voted off of the show on the June 18, 2008 episode.

Discography

Albums

Awards and nominations

• American Music Awards
  • Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist (Nominated)

• Grammy Awards
  • Best R&B Album: Bittersweet (Nominated)
  • Best Female R&B Vocal Performance: "Hit Em Up Style (Oops)" (Nominated)

Singles

Song appearances

References

• Howell, Stephen. "Blu Cantrell bio". Accessed Jun. 16, 2005.

External links

• Blu Cantrell at Allmusic
• Blu Cantrell at MySpace