I Just Think She's Fly: Ledisi

Ledisi Young (her given name meaning "to bring forth" in Nigerian) was born in the Big Easy, where she sang with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra when she was eight years old and spent many adolescent hours watching her mother perform with a local R&B band, often in a nearby park. After the family relocated to Oakland, CA, Ledisi followed her mother's lead and sang in a local band, but left to form her own group and identity. She became widely noted for her performances in Beach Blanket Babylon, a long-running San Francisco-based cabaret featuring song parodies, celebrity impersonations, and enormous hats.

Ledisi released her first solo album, "Soulsinger" in 2000 on her own independent label. She followed it up with a jazz album in 2002. Her third studio album, Lost & Found, was released in 2007. Two of its singles -- "Alright" and "In the Morning" -- peaked within the Top 50 of Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, and a pair of Grammy nominations followed. 2008's It's Christmas featured updates of "Give Love on Christmas Day" and "What a Wonderful World." The appropriately-titled Turn Me Loose, her hardest-hitting release, came the next year. The singer's résumé also includes singing in choirs and studying opera and piano at the University of California, Berkeley's Young Musicians Program for five years.

--taken from http://www.aol.music.com/


Here's one of my favorite Ledisi songs, "We Are One," featuring Rahsaan Patterson.