Long Island's Chrisette Michele Doesn't Go Far From Home
by Joseph Leichman
Chrisette Michele is late. It's just after 11 a.m. on June 15 at Island Def Jam headquarters in Manhattan, and Michele, the label's newest jazz/soul child, is officially seven minutes past her glam appointment. Inside an oppressively white room just off IDJ's main entrance, Michele's absence does not stop Khadija Destrong from laying her implements of beautification across a bed of paper towels. "Eye shadow, eye pigment, skin care, foundation, powder, blush, mascara," Khadija chants, riding her finger down the row of products, brushes and sponges that await Michele.
Khadija, a freelance makeup artist and frequent stylist to the singers (Natalie Cole being her most celebrated client), can't wait to get started. "Nobody I ever worked on is ugly," she says, pulling the last of her cosmetics from an oversized suitcase. "We just enhance their natural beauty."
Michele walks in around 12, wearing a red button-down dress dissected by a brown belt, and brown-shingled flip-flops she removes as she sinks into an office chair. Khadija and Nadia, a hair stylist, pounce like ER doctors on a trauma patient, bombarding Michele with hands, mirrors, a hair iron and … whispers. Giggly, inaudible whispers. Two things are immediately clear: one, nobody minds that she's an hour overdue; and two, that Michele, who walked in alone and without (obviously) any makeup or a recognizable hairdo, is close with these people. Family close.
With the release of her debut album, I Am, Michele's fame has continued to expand, with approximately 26,000 first-week album sales and 29th position on the Billboard charts. India.Arie unearthed the 24-year-old from Patchogue, Long Island, when Michele was a student at the Five Towns College of Music, where the latter took a major in vocal jazz performance. Island Def Jam moved right away, signing Michele and sticking her on A-list collaborations. She sang on Jay-Z's "Lost One" and Nas' "Can't Forget About You" while writing and recording 60 tracks which were to be distilled into I Am.
Back in the makeup room, one can hardly tell that Michele's album will be released in four days. It's all girl talk and impromptu therapy, time away from the Island Def Jam media machine. Still, even in this undisturbed oasis, there is ample evidence that Michele's label is trying as hard as it can to turn her into a celebrity. I Am promo posters interlock along the walls with flyers touting Rihana, another IDJ artist who, along with Michele, is the label's current primary project. Both posters also serve as a testament to hair and makeup: while Khadija isn't wrong—Chrisette Michele is, indeed, naturally beautiful—the ethereal, shimmering smile on I Am is truly a work of art.
The same could be said of Michele at 1:06 p.m., when she exits her beauty session looking stunning and gripping a black dress on a hanger. With a quick, shy smile she takes the stairs to a lower floor, where she will change quickly and then shoot downtown to the Music Choice building on West 34th Street. This time, she will travel with what serves as her posse: her mother, who is also her manager, Khadija, Nadia and a label rep. She is there to film a short interview segment for Music Choice's Summer Heat series.
"Chrisette is definitely a different artist from a lot of the people that we do get," says Akim Bryant, Music Choice's programming coordinator. "She's not an Erykah Badu, necessarily, type of vibe; she's very original. She's a nice hybrid between Erykah and Beyonce and people like that. [She's] that whole entire full package."
Michele is actually a bit more than that—equal parts Erykah and Beyonce, for sure, but also Alicia Keys, Sarah Vaughan and especially Billie Holiday. On "Your Joy," a song Michele wrote for her father, she is notably precise, patient and thin, and her pseudo-scat at the end of "If I Have My Way" is the most direct piece in the Holiday allegory.
Michele, however, has no designs on usurping anyone else's territory. Her album name speaks volumes. "The reason I called the album I Am is because it's just basically me being different facets of Chrisette Michele," she says in the Music Choice green room, her third-person reference bearing no pretentiousness. Michele is quite courteous and humble, making unfailing eye contact and speaking earnestly. With her album release less than 100 hours away, she is placid, already a success in her own eyes because she believes so deeply in her work.
"Having my name on something and giving it to hundreds of thousands of people is going to be an experience that I've never had before," she says, her face alight. "I've never given so many people part of myself. I've sang for audiences, but they haven't been able to literally take that and put it in someone else's hands and say, 'Here, listen to this.' So I'm excited, and I can't wait to see what people have to say and feel."
Strangely enough, "giving herself" to people is a much-discussed topic for Michele. The daughter of a former deacon, Michele is celibate, a rarity in the ultra-sexed hip-hop universe.
"It's part of being a Christian, and it's also become part of who I am. Say you eat macaroni and cheese every day for 11 days—everybody knows that you eat macaroni and cheese every day. That's your lifestyle. So chastity has become part of my lifestyle. [But] I'm human, and just like everyone else who's human I have desires.
"'If I Have My Way' is a song that celebrates chastity. I'm trying with everything that's inside of me, you'll hear on this song"—Michele raises her voice and laughs—"Please don't whisper anything else in my ear, because I'm trying to live this lifestyle."
Michele is big on self-discipline, mostly because she was born with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and had to train herself to do everything. "My mother was my quote-unquote 'therapist' at home—'Chrissie, concentrate' 75 times over and over till I could write one page. Then when I got to college, and had to study and sit there for hours in lectures, shaking my legs because I could not be still …" Michele breaks off, agitated and amused at the memory.
"It's easier now. I can be onstage, I can be in glam, I can be on the phone at the same time, I have a million and one things to do. It's my mind. This career is my mind. ADHD is going to make me rich."
Her ADHD is dormant, at least for now. Michele is at full attention, firing away so capably that it seems as though she's heard all these questions a thousand times before. Her preparedness roots in family, from her manager mother to her religious father to her "genius" younger brothers to Khadija and Nadia. Michele is neither flustered nor awed by her fanfare, perhaps because she is shielded from most of it by a familial phalanx. Her blissful outlook is reinforced daily, with none of the diva despondence that beset many of the women to whom Michele is compared. She is a kid, after all, but one with a functional family and a rosy disposition.
Faced with the possibility of disillusionment, of one day no longer relishing the pop star treatment, Michele turns incredulous, and fast. "Do I get tired of getting my nails done every day, then having someone make up my face—who I love—then having my hair done, then perhaps getting a new outfit and jewelry, then being heard over millions of airwaves on the radio because they like my songs? Am I tired of having my album and my first single top 10? I can't complain. I'm a kid, I'm young, I have energy, I'm taking advantage of my youth while I have it. I'm having a blast, absolutely."
Was she late? Yes. But Chrisette Michele has arrived.
