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Bad
Boy’s hottest new signing comes in the shape of R&B starlet
Cassie. The Situation sits down with the youngster to talk music, movies
and MySpace.
Watch
the video 'Long
Way To Go'
Since
signing to Ryan Leslie’s
NextSelection production label in early 2005, 19-year-old Cassandra
Ventura has been on a rollercoaster ride to superstardom.
Better known to the masses as Cassie, the young model-turned-singer only recognised her vocal talents in 2004, after a chance meeting with producer Rockwilder (Method Man, Redman, Pink) led her into his studio. Whilst nothing concrete came out of the encounter, it would set the foundations for a later meeting with prolific beatmaker Ryan Leslie, who brought her music to the attention of industry veteran Tommy Mottola (the man who discovered and managed Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez).
Using popular networking site MySpace.com to garner worldwide support for her fledgling music career, Cassie whipped up a storm with the sexy, provocative lyrics of debut single ‘Me & U’, and a bidding war ensued between various record labels. Bad Boy Records won the fight, and Cassie signed on the dotted line in March this year.
With Leslie, Mottola and now P. Diddy in her corner, Cassie was never going to fail, and their faith in the youngster was proved right when ‘Me & U’ reached No.1 on the US Billboard R&B charts and cracked the UK Top 10 with the single landing at No.6 in the national charts.
While in London to promote her album and forthcoming single, The Situation sat down with the sexy R&B star to discuss her latest career move, unearth a few secrets and reveal how she handled those MySpace critics…
You
started out as a model before your singing talent was discovered. How
quickly did things move from you recording the first song with Ryan Leslie
to the meeting with P. Diddy and your signing to Bad Boy?
Well that took about a year until I signed to Bad Boy from when I recorded
the song, which is crazy, but we did it! So So Def, Virgin Records and
Jive [were in the bidding war]… We had some other options, but Bad
Boy was, you know, a consistent place that Ryan had been working with
and he was familiar with, and I have to say, at the end of the day, I
was gonna be a priority there. You know, Janet [Jackson]’s album
was gonna come out on Virgin, so I’m like, ‘I’m not
gonna go there!’, you know what I mean? I love her, but I don’t
wanna get stuck, so ultimately we decided Bad Boy was the right place
to be.
Your
debut album has already done so well on the back of one single. How did
you prepare for all the media attention that came with the release?
I guess I am surprised when I see myself in all these tabloid magazines,
and like, real life is really, really strange. Even leaving a club here,
all the media, it’s just… everybody’s like “Cassie,
Cassie!” And I’m like ‘Oh my God! How do they know who
I am?’ You know?! It’s cool and it’s exciting, but I
tend to ignore it, for the most part.
Obviously
there have been haters – it comes with the territory – but
how do you cope with the criticism? Most people will have read or heard
of your MySpace blogs already and all the fuss over the original ‘Me
& U’ video and your earlier stage performances…
You gotta turn it into a positive. I used to internalise it and really
make it hard for myself, ’cos at the time I was a teenager and I
first got into the business, an you know, when people all over the world
are saying that they don’t like you, like different people all over
the world, you know, you have to equate it to the people that do like
you just as much as the people that hate you. So I really decided to recreate
myself, turn it around, turn it into a positive and take it from there.
’Cos it really does help when you put that anger into your music
or into your performance; it really does help.
As
a model and now a singer, you’re constantly under the media spotlight.
What’s your beauty secret to keeping your skin fresh and flawless?
I use a cleanser, it’s like a foaming purifying cleanser, called
La Roche-Posay. It’s really, really, really good, and I use the
cleanser, the night and the morning cream. That’s my main beauty
secret!
It’s
rumoured that you’ve been courted by both Bow Wow and Omarion, but
you turned them both down…
Oh wow, you know, they’re both great guys and I know them and they’re
cool; they’re totally cool guys. It wasn’t even like that,
the media turned it into something so much bigger than what it was.
What
qualities do you look for in a potential boyfriend?
Definitely a sense of humour; that has to be there! They gotta keep me
upbeat when I’m down. Somebody who’s just as ambitious as
I am, whether you work at McDonald’s, you know what I mean? I don’t
care. I just want you to have an outlook on life andwhat you wanna do
eventually.
Tell
me something about yourself that nobody knows…
I don’t know…erm… I used to be really awkward-looking
when I was little! At one time my front teeth were growing bigger than
my face! There’s gotta be something more interesting than that!
Hmm… You know what? People may not realise but I’m a big family
person and really, really close to them. I talk to them everyday, my mum,
my dad and my brother, every single day, so I’m very, very close
to my family.
Most
artists have set goals they want to achieve by the end of their career
– do you have a career plan all set out?
I just hope that people thoroughly enjoy my music, you know the success
comes when people are enjoying the music, so as long as they enjoy it
and they support. At the end of the day, you know, I still wanna try acting,
and I wanna try a lot of different stuff but I just hope to eventually
touch people with my music, in a good way.
Where
do you see yourself a year from now?
In a year, I hope I’ll be back out here with another album! I just
want to have finished a successful tour, and maybe have some time off,
for like five minutes! Then come back and do it again! Nah, really though,
I really wanna look at some scripts, and I’ve already gotten a few,
so I hope to start on one of those in the next few months.
What
do you think of rappers and singers going into the acting business? It
seems a lot of artists are latching onto a new trend.
Well, the thing is, it’s the agencies that we have come in that
are giving us these opportunities, getting us these scripts, but I really
look up to Mos Def, he’s really turned his acting career into a
real career, like you don’t associate him with his music and acting,
they’re separated. You know, working with amazing acting coaches,
and just really putting my all into it, and that’s how I do with
the music. I assume that if… well, I don’t assume, because
nothing is really concrete, but to turn everything around and just like
I did with this industry, put my all into it; I put my whole heart into
it, and just really applied myself, and hopefully it’ll turn out
the same way. If I fall, I’ll get back up at some point, you know!
What
kind of role would you be looking for your first acting part?
I looked at some scripts for Denzel Washington films, there’s one…
the first one, I was too young for the first one, it was to play his girlfriend,
which was like, you know, but the other one was ‘The Great Debater’,
which is another film he’s directing and he’s in, so we’ll
see. They’re intense roles, so you know, really great films, so
I really need to step up my game and that’s where I want to be,
so I’ll take some time off and do that. But, it’s too gruelling,
I’m gonna be working for the rest of my life I think!
The
new single is ‘Long Way 2 Go’ – when can we expect a
tour from you?
Actually, I may be back next month to do some shows. I’ll be getting
back to the States to get into rehearsal because so far I’ve only
performed ‘Me & U’ and some of ‘Long Way 2 Go’,
so I need to do a 30, 45-minute set and probably start touring, so hopefully
soon!
Cassie’s new single, ‘Long Way 2 Go’, and her debut
album are out now on NextSelection/Bad Boy. For more information, check
out her MySpace page: www.myspace.com/cassiemyspacemusic.
