Floetry
"Poetic delivery with musical intent"
- that's what singer-songwriter Marsha Ambrosius and emcee-songwriter
Natalie Stewart call the fusion of soul and spoken word that
is Floetry. The London duo's name was suggested by a fan.
Recalls Natalie: "Somebody said: 'Yo, that stuff you
do is so dope. It's like poetry, but it's like you're flowing.'
I thought, aha - Floetry! My flow goes with Marsha's singing
to stress the meaning of our songs. We are a songstress and
a floacist [pronounced like lyricist]."
They are also much sought-after songwriters. Among the compositions
they've provided for other artists is "Butterflies,"
the second single off Michael Jackson's Invincible album and
a #2 hit on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles &
Tracks chart. The pair has worked extensively with Glenn Lewis,
penning "Simple Things," "Lonely," "This
Love" and "Take You High," from his World Outside
My Window. They wrote "Love Again" for Jill Scott
and Jazz (Dru Hill), from the "Rush Hour 2" soundtrack,
as well as "You Are" for Bilal, from 1st Born Second.
Faith Evans and Brandy likewise requested songs from Marsha
and Natalie.
Most recently, the girls have collaborated with Mr. Cheeks
("Let's Get Wild), Motown artist Journalist ("The
Way It Used To Be" - they even appear in the video for
that track) and Arista up-and-comer Cherokee ("Star").
(Though Marsha and Natalie work together almost exclusively,
Natalie was prevented from participating in some of the pair's
commissions as she was unable to leave London during their
production.)
Still, the #1 priority for Floetry is Floetry. To illuminate
who they are, the pair composed a defining anthem, "Floetic,"
which serves as the first radio track off their debut album,
as well as the title of the album itself. Says Marsha of the
disc's musical center: "We put floeticism into everything
we do. We are two opposites on the planet coming together
and making something real creative happen." Natalie confirms:
"We're very different. People often laugh and say Marsha's
jiggy and I'm earthy. But we round each other out."
Indeed, these opposing forces complement one another, which
is evident from their respective musical tastes. Says Natalie:
"I have a Jamaican family, so I have a lot of reggae
in me, a lot of rare groove [vintage soul] and revival music.
Marsha has a lot of funk and soul in her. We're both into
hip-hop, but my hip-hop is Talib Kweli, Mos Def and Common;
Marsha's is Jay-Z and Nas."
The merging of these influences produces an eclectic sound
Marsha describes as "a combination of everything that
makes you feel good - it's Aretha's 'Respect'; it's Aerosmith's
'I Don't Want To Miss A Thing'; it's the 'Friends' theme.
It's everything you have to smile about."
Natalie Stewart was raised in a military household. "My
father was in the British army, so I was a bit of a get-up-and-go
army brat," she reports. "We spent a lot of time
watching 'Sesame Street' in different countries [Germany,
Hong Kong]. As the youngest of three children, Natalie found
herself trying to keep up with her sister and brother, who
were five and seven years older. She also spent a lot of time
alone. "I had a very big imagination," she says.
"When I was eight, on my summer vacation, I wrote a book
and printed it up at my mom's workplace and sold it to the
kids back at school. I used to tell my mom I wanted to be
a writer, an author. That was my thing."
By the time she was eight, Marsha Ambrosius had also begun
to discover her thing. "My father's a bass player,"
she informs, "so I've been surrounded by music my whole
life. We would just sing around the house, harmonizing to
everything. Like the ice cream man - just make a song out
of his little jingle."
When she was 16, Marsha formed a singing group. She recalls:
"I had this silly group for a local talent show. A holiday
to Spain was at stake. We were like the female Jodeci. We
got to the finals and my friend got very ill and then it was
time to go onstage. I was thinking, 'I can't do this alone,'
but the people who organized the contest kept saying, 'It's
your turn.' So I got up and sang Mariah Carey's 'Vision Of
Love.' My mother and father were sitting there. They were
awestruck because they had never heard me sing like that.
I put my all into it and it was, like, 'Wow, maybe I do have
something.'"
Natalie and Marsha both attended Brits Performing Arts School.
Marsha studied business and finance and dabbled in a few creative
courses: voice, performance technique, recording technique.
Natalie pursued acting and directing. Then, they went off
to college. Marsha relates: "In '95 I left the college
I was going to because I had a bad injury that stopped me
from getting my scholarship to Georgia Tech. I then did a
certificate in marketing at a different school, but I kept
thinking about music. I said to myself, 'Okay, I do have a
little something - let me try it.' And when I did, I ended
up doing a demo that was played on radio in Britain for a
while, which got me a publishing deal."
Natalie, meanwhile, had enrolled in Middlesex University,
then transferred to North London University. "I met a
lot of zombies at university, people who were trying to make
themselves into this or that," she laments. "They
just didn't interest me, and I really needed to fly. I called
my father, who is very 'let's get a degree' and said, 'Daddy,
I'm a poet.'" She immediately made good on her declaration,
forming a poetry group with three friends. They called themselves
3 Plus 1.
"We were hitting the poetry circuit, doing performance
poetry, spoken word," she remembers. "All this time
I'm calling Marsha and saying, 'What's going on with you?'
She had her publishing deal. She was writing. She was doing
her thing, and I was doing mine."
After a few months, however, ego clashes surfaced in 3 Plus
1. So when Marsha called Natalie saying she had a hook and
wanted Natalie to add her poetry to it, Natalie jumped at
the chance. She called Marsha the next day with some verses.
"I was getting into real problems with my group,"
recollects Natalie. "We had this performance scheduled,
and I said to them, 'You know what? I'm gonna do my own thing
at the show. I'll see you guys there.' So I called Marsha
and said: 'I got this show. Do you want to come, along?' And
she said, 'Okay, let's do it.'"
"We rehearsed on the train on the way to the show,"
Natalie continues. "It was different for Marsha because
she'd been on the R&B stage, which can be tough; sometimes
the audience is kind of waiting for you to go wrong. People
might be sitting back, like, 'Look at you. Look at your shoes.
Look at your hair.' But the poetry crowd is more 'C'mon, sister
- speak up!' We had a real breakthrough when we got up there;
it was an incredible feeling being onstage with somebody you
feel 50-50 with. And there was such a reaction from the audience:
Everyone was crazy about it."
Quickly acknowledging the magic they'd created jointly that
night, the girls began writing together in earnest. "We'd
lie on the floor and trade ideas back and forth," Natalie
illuminates. "Marsha is a genius when it comes to melody.
She hears the tone in my vocals and arranges the melody around
it. I'm more into language, the way you put words together,
what you emphasize. So we were writing and we were leaning
on each other. One of the biggest journeys Marsha and I went
through was turning around and saying, 'Yo, I need you.'"
Initially billing themselves simply as Nat And Marsh, the
pair began receiving raves on the London performance circuit.
They were soon booked solid. About that time, a friend who
lived in Atlanta encouraged them to explore the poetry scene
there. "So we went to Atlanta and blew people away,"
says Marsha. "And I'd always been afraid of the U.S.A.,
thinking, 'They have major talent - what are we gonna bring?
But we were something new; our music was something fresh to
them. And then we got a phone call from a promoter in Philadelphia."
Floetry promptly landed in Philly, playing (among other gigs)
Black Lily, the multicultural answer to Lilith Fair. The two-day
trip became a week as the girls agreed to join the show for
two additional nights. Shortly thereafter, they met J. Erving,
the man who would become their manager.
"When we first hooked up, he was on his way to a Sixers
playoff game," recalls Natalie, "so he said, 'I'll
hear something quick.' We did an a capella for him and he
said, 'You got anything else?' So we did a couple more. He
ended up missing the first half of the game, which, in basketball
terms, is big love. It's funny because we grew up in basketball,
and it turns out J. is Dr. J.'s [Julius Erving's] son and
he ends up being our manager!"
The girls returned to Philadelphia in July 2000, developing
their relationship with Erving, writing at Axis studios, playing
Black Lily shows and building their street crowd. Before long,
they were shopping for a record deal and by August, Jeff Townes
had heard their music and invited them to A Touch Of Jazz.
That's when Natalie and Marsha and the Touch Of Jazz producers
cranked out those 11 songs.
Floetry was feeling good, but they were about to feel even
better. As they prepared to leave for a trip back to London,
Townes asked them to listen to a message he'd gotten. Marsha
reminisces: "So he hits play, and this really light voice
comes out of the answering machine: 'I'm really interested
in that stuff coming out of A Touch of Jazz. That Floetry
stuff is really cool.' It was Michael Jackson!"
When the pair returned from the U.K., their career momentum
began to reach critical mass. Townes secured a label deal
with DreamWorks Records, and it was determined that Floetic
would be the first album released under the arrangement.
It's this sort of triumph the girls feel they must experience
together in order to fully appreciate, a belief that perhaps
more than anything illustrates their identification as a creative
unit. Says Marsha: "There have been shows where Nat's
smiling at me for something I've done, and then she'll start
spitting all kinds of freestyles, and I'll be thinking to
myself, 'How is someone that clued?' I chose the right person
to be down with."
Natalie concurs: "We're right there for each other, seeing
it, feeling it. You know, there have been some arguments and
some tears but also a lot of hugs. It all comes down to 'You
shared this with me.' We don't have boyfriends. We don't have
children. We don't have anything we're carrying with us. What
we very much have is each other." Marsha jumps in with
the last word: "We're sisters," she says, and leaves
it at that.
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