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08/23/2002 The Queen's Scene |
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Southern Hummingbird-Vocalist Tweet sings a new song as she rises from the depths of despair into a life filled with promise
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by Michelle Muhammad
Tweet was given the name Southern Hummingbird by Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott because she sings so beautifully and sounds as sweet as a bird. Life has not always been sweet for the singer, songwriter, composer and producer. The world almost lost out on hearing her angelic voice through a series of misfortunes in her short lifetime. The songbird was just hours from committing suicide when God intervened.
The Rochester, New York native who was born Charlene Keys has been singing all of her life. She grew up in the church and has been singing in groups since she was a small child. As a teen she attended a performing arts high school where she joined the choir. In 1990 she gave birth to a daughter and continued to sing in hopes of fulfilling her dream of having a singing career.
After hearing that Devante of Jodeci was holding auditions for a new girl group named Sugah in 1994, Tweet auditioned and got the part. That is where she met Missy Elliott who was also a member of the group and they formed a friendship. Later, due to creative differences, Missy left the group to become who she is today and Tweet stayed behind. The group was promised many things, but nothing ever came through. Her relationship with her boyfriend was on its last leg. It seemed as if everything was crashing down around her at the same time. Her then-boyfriend was tainting her love for music to the point where she did not want to do music anymore. In addition, she had friends and family telling her negative things, like they knew she wouldn’t make it anyway.
Tweet began to have suicidal thoughts and even confessed them to her boyfriend secretly, hoping that he would tell her not to do it. According to published reports, he was very nonchalant and wanted to know how and what she was going to do. In 2000 after her boyfriend left her and she severed ties with the group "Sugah," Tweet started drinking. She would literally pull the seats out of her father’s car and get all of the change out of the seats and go buy a 40-ounce of Old English. She drank these 40-ounces every day to numb herself to the realities of her life. Tweet felt like she did not want to live anymore.
Depressed and penniless, she fled to her parents’ place in Panama City, Florida. For the first time in her life, the girl who was inspired to pursue a music career from her church singing days, was thinking of giving up her dream altogether. "It was worse than that. I was so depressed I began to contemplate suicide," Tweet says, adding that she even rehearsed how she would do it. "I was going to take a bunch of pills. I had gone through this period looking for any regular job I could find and coming up empty. My love life was deteriorating. The music business seemed a million miles away. I was just existing, hiding from my parents how deeply depressed I really was."
Not being able to take care of her 10 year old daughter, coupled with the ending of her eight-year toxic relationship, Tweet was knocking at death’s door asking to be let in. Miraculously, the day before she was about to kill herself she got a call in the middle of the night from her old friend Missy asking her to sing background vocals on her [Miss EÉSo Addictive] album. Recalling that day, Tweet says that she know it was God because she had prayed for years for him to take her out of bad situations.
Tweet says, "I call her my guardian angel now because she truly rescued me from ending my life. É she was God sent!" While laying down her vocals for her friend’s album, Tweet picked up her guitar and began playing and singing one of her own songs and impressed Missy. She was so impressed by the impromptu audition that she had her do an encore for Elektra Chairman/CEO Sylvia Rhone. She was signed, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The capacity crowd at The House of Blues in Chicago is rocking as Tweet sings her hit song "Call Me." The people over at Verizon Wireless realize how hot the song is and it is now a commercial for their cell phone service. Tapping into her Gospel roots, she hushed the crowd with her song "Complain." The song is a prayer that the singer wrote to herself after her dark period. "I was so filled with emotion after that experience. I’m basically saying that because God took me out of that situation, I’ll never complain again."
As soon as the music to her debut single "Oops (Oh My)" came on, the crowd went off. Though everyone seems to think that the song is about something sexual, Tweet says otherwise. "It’s about self-love and appreciation." The singer says that she was real insecure with herself for a long time. She did not like her skin color, her nose, she was really unhappy with herself. In the group Sugah, she was always considered the fat one, even though she was wasn’t weighing over 120 pounds. Therefore, she became insecure. In the song she is saying to herself, "Tweet stop trippin’! You’re alright, so love what you see in the mirror. That’s what the song is about regardless to what people think."
Through her set and CD, Tweet allows the listener to take a peek into her life. The songs that are on her album Southern Hummingbird are all her true-life experiences and allows people to see what made her the person that she is today. She says that she hopes this virtual diary (Southern Hummingbird) will help someone not make the same mistakes that she did in life.
When asked whether or not all of the things that she has experienced in her life on the road to long awaited debut album has caused her to change the way she looks at life, she pauses thoughtfully. "Everything happened for a reason. I think all the experiences, even the unpleasant ones, have made me stronger. You suffer sometimes in order to gain anything. I know there’s a time and a place for everything in this life." And Tweet’s time is definitely now.
(Michelle Muhammad may be reached at her e-mail address at: thequeensscene@yahoo.com).