Surround yourself with good people and things have a tendency to go your way. In the case of singer Melanie Fiona, working with Kanye West, Cee Lo Green and Alicia Keys seems to have done the trick — to the tune of two Grammy Awards and a future without limits.
The Toronto-born R & B artist recently won her first two Grammys for Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for her Cee Lo Green collaboration “Fool for You.”
“It was a dream come true for me,” says Fiona, of winning the awards. (On the actual night, she was so excited she ran through the auditorium and up to the stage in towering platform heels and a floor-length gown to accept her first Grammy.)
“It means that if I never do anything else, I can say I achieved a high level of accomplishment in the music industry.”
But most critics seem to agree that Fiona is just getting started. At 28, the singer has just released her second album, The MF Life. She is co-managed by Roc Nation, the record label/management team founded by industry mogul Jay-Z, which manages superstars such as Rihanna and Shakira. Plus, she’s already toured as an opening act for Kanye West and Alicia Keys.
It becomes obvious during the interview that Fiona makes things happen for herself and doesn’t waste much time.
The second child of Guyanese parents who emigrated to Canada in the 1970s, Fiona spent her childhood in North York and moved to Vaughan as a teenager with her parents and older brother. She attended St. Joan of Arc Catholic High School. And this might drive a few people crazy, but the immensely talented Fiona says — with the exception of a vocal lesson at the age of 12, which she claims she “hated” — she hasn’t had any vocal training, and that singing just came naturally.
It’s no surprise, then, that music played a formative role in her life growing up. Her father played guitar in a band that performed at weddings, and she remembers music was always on in the background at home. “We are all big music lovers,” Fiona says. “It was instinctive that music would be what I wanted to do, and my parents supported that.”
Fiona says she realized in her mid-teens that she excelled at singing, even though she’d always known in the back of her mind she wanted to be a musician. At the Grammys, her mother surprised her with a book she kept from Fiona’s kindergarten years, in which she had written — at the age of four — that she wanted to be a singer.
But when she made the decision to forgo university acceptance and pursue a career in music, it was a tough decision for everyone — including her parents.
“They moved here [to Canada] for a better life, so this was a big blow for them,” she says. But she didn’t give up on education altogether, instead opting to enroll at Seneca College. While there, Fiona pursued her musical career alongside academics. For a short time, she sang at a local club in Toronto with a group called Renaissance — with another Canadian recording artist who’s doing all right for himself. You’ve heard of Drake, right? (No Grammy Awards though, ahem.)
“He threw me into the ocean of sharks. I survived, and it put me on the map.”
After a stint in an all-girl group, Fiona decided to go it alone and started working with a Toronto-based manager (whom she met through a mutual friend). After forming her own production company, Title 9, she started making inroads in the Los Angeles music scene while maintaining her studies. She gives a lot of credit to her manager, Carmen.
“I love having a female manager because she’s about ‘You can do it all,’” Fiona says.
Her big break came after she signed with SRC Records and Universal Motown in 2007. Although she had yet to release an album, Kanye West heard her sing and asked her to be the opening act for his Glow in the Dark tour overseas in 2008.
“He threw me into the ocean of sharks,” Fiona says. “I survived, and it put me on the map.”
Fiona’s 2009 debut album, The Bridge, earned her a first Grammy nomination in the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance category for “It Kills Me,” which topped the U.S. Billboard R&B singles chart for nine weeks.
She says her new album, The MF Life, showcases her development as a singer and her versatility by incorporating a myriad of styles from hip hop and reggae to Motown.
“It’s all in the interest of growth,” says Fiona. “The key thing I want to impress upon anyone who listens to The MF Life is the idea that it’s possible to learn from everything that comes at you,” she continues. “That’s been my process. It’s why, on the surface, the ‘MF’ in the album title represents my initials, but it also gets at the many facets of myself as an artist and a young woman.”
The album features songs about taking control and changing your life’s direction, pop-infused upbeat rhythms meant to empower — but at the same time “involving many highs and lows,” she explains.
It also includes new collaboration with artists such as T-Pain and B.O.B. Neo-soul singer John Legend is featured on the track titled “L.O.V.E.,” and the lead single “Gone and Never Coming Back” was co-written and produced by hit-making machine Andrea Martin.
With so many heavyweights behind her, one would think nothing in the industry would phase Fiona, but the newly minted Grammy winner laughs as she talks about how nervous she was upon first meeting Cee Lo Green. They met at the Soul Train Awards in Atlanta. Encouraged by her manager, Fiona introduced herself.
“I had won Best New Artist, and I loved Cee Lo,” Fiona says. “My manager said, ‘Talk to him,’ and I said, ‘But he’s Cee Lo,’ and she said, ‘You’re Melanie Fiona. Talk to him.’”
Fiona told him on the spot she’d like to work with him.
Now based in New York City, Fiona visits Toronto regularly to see family and friends. She especially loves coming here for the food, she says. “Whether it’s in my mom’s kitchen or at a restaurant downtown, I love to eat in Toronto.”
Her burgeoning career continues to take her away from her hometown. She’s hoping to tour soon, although she’s not sure who she’ll be on the road with this time. She says she’d love to do a tour with Adele. “After Kanye West and Alicia Keys, the bar is high,” she says.
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