Early Life and Career
Lawanda McFarland grew up in the Bronx, New York. Her mother was a jazz singer working with Duke Ellington, Berry Gordy and Quincy Jones, while her aunt sang with The Supremes. While still a teenager, she became the first female Hip Hop DJ as the protégé of Hip Hop DJ Kool Herc, who gave her the stage name Wanda Dee. She was eventually introduced to Afrika Bambaataa, who inducted her into his Universal Zulu Nation. Alongside of her boyfriend/business partner, rapper Richard Sisco ("Sisco Kid"), she appeared in Beat Street, a 1984 film about the Hip Hip sub-culture produced by Harry Belafonte. Wanda and Sisco's relative success - she received many offers to go on tour while he did not - contributed to the pair breaking up. At the time, Wanda had already met Eric Floyd, her future husband and manager.
Floyd encouraged her to switch from the turntables to the microphone and in 1986, she released her first single, "Blue Eyes", produced by British hit factory Stock Aitken Waterman. In 1989, she achieved commercial success with "The Goddess"/"To the Bone". The publication of a full album was hampered by disagreements with Tuff City Records, Wanda's distributor at the time.
Read more about this topic: Wanda Dee
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