Song:Call Me
Album:Tunin' Up & Cosignin'
R & B singer Chonita "N'Dambi" Gilbert started out as a backup singer in the mid-90s. For several years she released her music independently until finally making her major label debut last year on Stax. She has a lot of talent and is definitely worth checking out. Like a lot of contemporary R & B and gospel artists, N'Dambi is a Preacher's Kid. Her dad is a Baptist minister in Dallas and she's the ninth of eleven children. So obviously she grew up singing in church and was not allowed to listen to secular music. At age 18, she got married, moved to Hawaii and had a child. But that was over in a year and a half and she moved back to Dallas and earned a degree in English from Southern Methodist University. She wanted to become a writer. In 1995 she started hanging around the Dallas hip hop scene and met singer Erika Wright and her partner Madukwu Chinwah. Erika would soon become Erykah Badu and N'Dambi would tour with her as a backup singer for several years. But Chinwah liked N'Dambi's voice and wanted her to go solo. Despite the success of Erykah Badu, Universal was not interested so N'Dambi's first few CDs were released independently. Tunin' Up & Cosignin' was a 2CD set released in 2001. Most of the songs including Call Me were written by N'Dambi and Chinwah and a remix of Call Me did get some club play. There was a single CD version of Signin' Up & Cosignin' released in 2006 but it seems to be out of print. She finally signed with Stax Records and released her major label debut Pink Elephant in Oct. 2009. Of course Stax is now owned by Concord Music Group. She still writes her own songs and the CD was produced by Leon Sylvers III. If you're an R & B fan, you need to keep an eye out for N'Dambi's red afro. She's a great talent on the way up. Here's N'Dambi performing Call Me at the 2005 Tokyo Crossroads Jazz Festival.
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