Our New Favorite Artist!

Praline and I were in Starbucks one day and she ran up to me and said "mom this lady looks like you!" (to say the least, I felt honored that she looks 20 years younger than I actually am).

It was a CD by Corinne Bailey Rae, besides gospel we often listen to neo soul and we decided to try it out. To our surprise every song was a hit, for us that is. We call her a cross between Macy Gray and Jill Scott.

When we got home I googled her and found that the evil "racism" exists even in England today. Check it out a little of her story I found on the the internet.....

She was born February 26,1979 and is an acclaimed English singer and Songwriter who released her eponymous debut album in February 2006. Rae was named the number one predicted breakthrough act of 2006 in an annual BBC poll of music critics. The poll's predictions subsequently came true, as she became only the fourth female British act in history to have her first album debut at number one.

Rae was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, to a Kittitian father and an English mother and she was the eldest of three daughters. She used to be racially abused on a regular basis while growing up, even though her verbal attackers mistakenly thought she was of Pakistani origin. She says about the situation, "My sisters and I were different and people used to say, 'Ah, aren't they cute, the little chocolate children, and look at their hair.' "I know they were only being cute but it was over the top. "Then people from other schools would shout, 'Paki' to me because it was the most common racist insult of the time. At least if you're going to do it, get it right. "I used to shout back, 'But my dad isn't from Pakistan, he's from St Kitts - so there.

She began her musical career at school where she studied classical violin before she turned her attention to singing: "I started off singing in church, I suppose, but people think it must have been a gospel church because of the whole, you know, black assumption," she says in reference to her mixed-race background. "But it wasn't gospel at all, it was just your regular Brethren church, very middle-class, where we would sing these harmonies every Sunday. It was always my favourite part of the service, the singing. Rae later transferred to a Baptist church, where the choir would sing traditional hymns. "We changed the words though," Rae states on her website. "We didn't want to offend the regular churchgoers, now did we?