She traveled, all right
Canadian R&B singer has had a long road, but she’s always had the goods
John Kendle



Jully Black talks about destiny a lot in the course of an interview with Uptown.

When I apologize for missing an earlier call because I’m a forgetful guy whose brain was addled by trying to get out to the Winnipeg Folk Festival on time, she lets me down breezily.

“Don’t worry, it just wasn’t meant to happen then. It was our destiny to speak today,” she says. “Everything happens for a reason, so you were meant to talk to me now.”

It’s an easy let-off for me — but Black’s sunny attitude must be especially helpful to a woman who has been waiting and working on her debut album for more than three years.

In 2002, Black, now 27, was signed to a U.S. recording deal with MCA Records in a rare joint venture with Universal Music Canada. She worked on her album in Toronto, Orlando, New York City and New Jersey with names such as Nas, DJ Nastee, producers Soul Diggaz and several other heavyweights.

The completed recording, then titled I Traveled, was slated for release in fall 2003 when MCA was suddenly purchased by, and then folded into, Interscope Records in the United States. Several MCA artists were cut loose, including Black.

As the legalities regarding who owned what was sorted out, Black spent the next year in limbo before Universal Music Canada stepped back into her life to help complete and finish the album.

The 14-track disc, rechristened This is Me, finally appeared in stores in Canada on June 21, and Black is already enjoying a radio hit with the reggae-tinged Sweat of Your Brow.

“I could have called this album anything,” she says. “But (This is Me) was simple enough and it is who I am. I am R&B and I am reggae and I am hip hop and I am rock, and all these things are here on this album, and all these things are here in the Canadian scene.

“I really think I am a vessel for R&B in Canada, so this is us, I think.”

Coming from anyone else, that could be a boastful remark, but Black isn’t bragging. She’s just making a point about her career and her background.

Jully was born in Toronto, the youngest of nine children in a Jamaican-Canadian family. She began singing in her church choir while growing up in the notorious Jane-Finch corridor, and her love of music led her to joining up with a nascent hip hop/R&B crew called The Circle in the mid-1990s.

This loosely affiliated collective of MCs and producers included the likes of Kardinal Offishall, Saukrates, Choclair, Solitair and Marvel, and Black was featured on almost all the songs created by the young MCs — usually for just eight bars or so, as a kind of R&B break.

By 1998, when she was just 20, Black’s talent as a musician and songwriter in her own right landed her a music publishing deal with Warner/Chappell, so her songs were being pitched to others even as she was still making a name for herself as a vocalist with the likes of T-Dot outfit Baby Blue Soundcrew.

Indeed, by the time she was signed to that U.S. deal, Black was the most-heard and best-known R&B singer in Toronto. Songs she’d worked on had been nominated for four Juno Awards, and she tore down the house in several nationally televised appearances with the Baby Blues.

In the past few months, the sales and awards-show success of k-os, combined with the out-of-the-box response to Black’s album and that of label-mate Divine Brown, has prompted Canadian music observers to talk about the “maturation” of Canadian hip hop and R&B. So Black has every right to feel that she’s been a part of it.

She feels even more honoured to be a part of a cross-country R&B/hip hop tour, as she is at the moment with American acts Black Eyed Peas and Talib Kweli.

“It is just mega-special for me to be doing this right now,” Black says. “It just seems right that it was meant to happen now. Here I am, getting to be the maple leaf on this tour, and it’s just fantastic.

“I can’t believe the love people are showing me, either,” she says. “The other night in Quebec City — in Quebec City, think about it — there were 5,500 people all right there at 7:30, yelling and singing along to Sweat of Your Brow.

“Things like that are very rewarding and they make it all seem worth it.”

Again Black mentions fate and destiny and how everything in her life seems to be happening at the right time now. Even when her U.S. record deal went south, she says she never gave up. She became a cast member of the Mirvish-produced musical Da Kink in My Hair at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Toronto and did 106 performances while she waited to see what would happen.

“Basically, my attitude was ‘so what?’” she says. “I have always grown up as being the underdog, and that is a thing that has always kept me grounded and made me work hard to burn the fat off my bum. And now I have a new record deal and I’m helping put the brand on R&B music in Canada.”

Now that she’s out on the road, with a video on TV, a single on radio and an audience ready to receive her every night, Black says she has no desire to slow down. At the moment, she and her seven-piece outfit are doing just 25 minutes on the BEP tour — but there’s much more on the horizon.

“It’s an incline, for sure, but there’s a college tour coming up, and maybe some work with Bedouin Soundclash and Alexisonfire, too. Dallas Green and I have worked together before, and he’s my man in the rock world.

“I want to do what Terry McBride did with Barenaked Ladies and just keep working it.

“I’ll go to places like Grande Prairie, Alta., and wherever they’ll have me. Right now I’m living every woman’s dream come true, and I’m very proud of that.”