Santi, on the other hand was already living in the big city of ambition, where she worked in the A&R department at Epic Records and was buddies with Rawkus Records’ reigning rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli, who also owned a book store a few blocks away. As the writer pointed out, “Singing was just something else she did on top of squash, tennis and lacrosse when she wasn’t in school or ringing the register alongside her father, who passed away in 2008, at one of the family’s five convenience stores in North Philly - a job all the Ballard kids were assigned when they were about 8 years old.” “I knew a lot of black girls who could sing,” she told Philadelphia Weekly scribe Tara Murtha in 2010. At the time, she was a finance major at Temple University who didn’t think her voice was that special.
Res was no stranger to singing, having sung since she was a kid. Back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the community of Fort Greene was still a fertile ground where young Black artists hung out, drank in bars, exchanged ideas, played music and chased their creative muses through the dark streets, following in the Brooklyn bohemian footsteps of Spike Lee, Lisa Jones, Nelson George, and others. Living upstairs from the famed Fort Greene spot Brooklyn Moon, a Black literary café where one might run into Carl Hancock Rux, Miles Marshall Lewis or Erykah Badu watching Saul Williams read poetry, the young women were busy creating their own thang.
Having teamed up with then-budding lyricist and fellow Philly artist Santi (Santigold) White in 1997, the early days of their collaboration began in the latter’s Brooklyn apartment. Indeed, for Philly girl Shareese (Res) Renée Ballard, being sonically different was the goal of How I Do from the early demo sessions to the final majestic product. Keys, she did have the Clive Davis machine behind her, pushing over boulders and getting her to play piano on Oprah, while all Res had was a great album that sounded dramatically different from what her peers were doing. Released the same musical season as Alicia Keys’ debut Songs in A Minor, critic Greg Kot reviewed the two albums in a single Chicago Tribute column and concluded, “Though Keys has been elevated to the forefront of the neo-soul movement overnight, her debut album isn’t nearly as strong as the extraordinary How I Do.” Taking nothing away from the obviously talented Ms. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in my ignorance concerning the sonic specialness of How I Do, an album that was hailed by critics, whose singles “Golden Boys” and “They-Say Vision” were played on MTV, but still somehow flew over the heads of the general public.
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“You don’t know about Res?” Rushing home afterwards, I cracked open the cellophane on one of the three Res advances I’d thrown in the corner, fired up a blunt and went sailing down to paradise like a smoked-out Christopher Cross. “It’s Res,” the woman answered, holding up the CD case. Awestruck, it was as if I was listening to a cool urban angel singing songs of red valentine romance and dark clouded break-ups.
Automatically assuming what I perceived to be a lackluster image was reflective of the material within, I simply rejected Res based on that silly speculation.įour months later, while visiting a friend at the World Wide Plaza offices of Def Jam Records, I heard some splendid songs blaring from a neighboring office and inquired with the oft-asked music aficionado question, “Who is that?” As the chilling “Ice King” dripped out of the speakers like hot honey, I stood in the doorway transfixed by one of the most hypnotic voices I’d heard in a long time singing playfully brutal lyrics (“Although I’ve seen your wickedness, I still love your effervescence”) over a head-nodding bassline. In retrospect, the cover conveys a cinematic quality that was hauntingly beautiful, but at the time, I just thought it was boring. Glancing at the innocent black and white photo taken by the usually provocative Ellen Von Unwerth, who has shot sexy snaps of Janet Jackson, Joi and Beyoncé, one sees a pretty-faced woman innocently looking over her shoulder as though being followed. We are taught from a young age to “never judge a book by its cover,” but that was exactly what I did in 2001 when copies of Res’ debut album How I Do began arriving at my Brooklyn garret that spring.
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