Sasha

SASHA may be a new name to the mainstream music audience, but what’s already proven is this: she’ll never be a one-hit wonder…and she’s already beaten the sophomore slump. “DAT SEXY BODY,” Sasha’s current VP Records single, is Sasha’s third major hit to cross over from dancehall to hip-hop. And with radio airplay exploding in Florida and the West Coast, the track is shaping up as a major pop phenomenon, too.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Sasha relocated to New York with her family at the age of five. Music was an active pursuit of her mother’s and all her four brothers, and Sasha sang in the church choir, stepping out as a soloist at eight in a Jamaican gospel festival. She wrote her first rap at 11, and as a student at August Martin High School, the young teen first performed professionally at Brooklyn’s Biltmore Ballroom, modeling herself after such childhood idols as rap’s pioneer female act, Salt-N-Pepa, as well as Jamaican female toaster Shelly Thunder.

Then, all at once, Sasha went from being a student and “popular chick” in class to a professional. “We snuck out to see Shabba Ranks, and he was calling for a girl to get onstage and dance. All my friends were yelling out, ‘She doesn’t want to dance, she wants to sing!’” Sasha took the mic and busted a freestyle that brought down the house. Shabba’s management, being so impressed with her display invited her to make some demo recordings, right then and there. Not two weeks went by before Steely & Clevie, computer dancehall’s whiz team, heard her demos and sought her out in New York. They flew her to Jamaica to write and cut her first record, the hardcore rap “Kill the Bitch.” The album was released by Island on the Bogle compilation alongside tracks by established stars Buju Banton and Papa San. Sasha’s track was picked as a standout by stateside DJs, and it has played for literally years in the hip-hop underground. At 16, Sasha was touring worldwide with all of dancehall’s biggest names, and learning her craft through a variety of experiences.

“I was always just a bold little girl; I never had stage fright, and my character is just outgoing, open and outspoken. Now, the studio experience was something else. When you’re an up-and-coming artist, you sometimes think that however you sound is correct. But when you go into the studio, and they tell you, ‘No, that’s not the right key,’ then the knees start shaking. So, my first experience in the studio was more than I bargained for, but it was also much more successful that I expected.”

Sasha showed another surprising aspect of her talent in 1998, when her cut on the “Bookshelf” rhythm, “Dat Sexy Body,” hit clubs and radio. “I transformed! I really gave it to them straight-up hardcore street in ‘Kill the Bitch;’ then I started working with Tony Kelly, he noticed something in my voice, and asked me to try singing. He pulled something out of me that I didn’t know I really had, different from my church singing. I didn’t know I could sing in such a high key; Tony pulled me to the edge. Sometimes you don’t recognize it yourself, but it was just in me.” Now, after a full four years of being a club and radio mix-show classic, “Dat Sexy Body” has resurfaced as a major chart contender, with massive Miami crossover airplay spreading to the West Coast and Northeast. A Spanish version of “Dat Sexy Body” is also in the works for immediate release.

Sasha’s third international hit returned her to the studio with Steely & Clevie in a duet with Sean Paul, “I’m Still in Love,” which shot to Number One in the reggae clubs of Jamaica, London, Miami and New York. It is slated to be a future single from Sean’s double-platinum album Dutty Rock, and a video, directed by Little X, has been filmed and is ready for MTV, BET, and all other video stations. Sean and Sasha perform a snappy updated combination treatment of Alton Ellis’ Studio One classic (best known globally through Althea and Donna’s 1978 version “Uptown Top Ranking”). Sasha embraces the girl-group tradition from the Supremes to Love Unlimited, I-Three and En Vogue, and brings it into dancehall with a multi-tracked performance that’s at once melodious, precise and soulful.

With the broadest range of vocal styles at her command, Sasha says she’s in the studio getting her focus on an album that will reflect all her facets. She’ll be back at work with trusted hit-makers Tony Kelly and Steely & Clevie, while joining such A-list dancehall producers as Jeremy Harding, Big Yard and Black Shadow’s Troyton (producer of Sean Paul’s “Gimme the Light”).
“There’s a hardcore Sasha, and there’s a Lauryn Hill sort of laid-back side that everyone can sing along with,” she says. “Then there’s another set of fans that want this high voice, ‘I would like to get to know you,’ like in ‘Sexy Body.’ ‘I’m Still in Love’ is a subtle Sasha; and those fans might not know the hardcore Sasha at all. So I look into the crowd and feel the people, and then I know how to work my show. And sometimes I tease them and introduce them to the other side of Sasha.”

Sasha’s intuition and sensitivity about her audience is reinforced by her innate cultural connection to both the Jamaican and American audiences. “In dancehall, the crossover market appreciates you, and dances to the beat, but they don’t always know what you’re saying. Even though I’m writing dancehall, my schooling was in New York, and the way I write and flow my words, all of people can understand the lyrical content of what I’m saying.”

As a vocalist, she has an assurance and versatility. The broad youth audience is just about to discover Sasha’s warm and welcoming personal style, both onstage and in one-to-one conversation. With all three of her hits still receiving heavy play in clubs, and two of them on the verge of a mainstream breakout, SASHA is undoubtedly this year’s rising star.