Song:Closer
Album:Change It All
Neo soul singer songwriter Goapele (pronounced Gwa-pull-ay) Mohlabane has had some success on the R & B charts. Closer was her very first single in 2002. You may have heard it in the 2003 film Honey starring Jessica Alba. She was born July 11, 1977 in Oakland, CA. Goapele means to move Forward in the South African language Setswana. Her father Douglas Mohlabane is an exiled African political activist. Her mother is American and she met and married Douglas while attending school in Kenya. They moved to the US and Goapele grew up in a South African exile community in Oakland. So obviously she was raised to be politically active. Goapele began singing in high school. She was in the Oakland Youth Choir and was part of Vocal Motion. After graduating high school, Goapele studied at Berklee School Of Music in Boston. After graduating, she moved back to Oakland and started working on her music. She self released her 2001 CD Closer. In 2002, she started her own label Skyblaze and reworked Closer as Even Closer. This is when Columbia Records came calling and signed Goapele to a distribution deal. They also used Closer in the 2003 film Honey. Goapele writes all her own songs but she works with several producers. Closer was produced by AMP Live aka Anthony Anderson. He is one half of the production duo Zion 1. They do a lot of remixes and produce their own albums. Goapele has appeared on their albums. Change It All is Goapele's third album. Columbia tacked on Closer at the end of the album because they thought listeners might remember it from Honey. Goapele also made several TV appearances and had some R & B chart success. Goapele's latest CD Strong As Glass was released in 2014. She recently signed with Eric Benet's new label Jordan House and she is working on a new CD that I expect will get a 2016 release. Here's the video for Closer by Goapele.
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