Early Life and Career
Macy Gray was born in Canton, Ohio, to Laura McIntyre, a math teacher, and Otis Jones; Laura later remarried Richard McIntyre, who adopted Macy and fathered her brother Nathon and sister Nehlia. She decided to pursue a career in music after being expelled from Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, which she had attended from the age of 14. However, Gray's initial success came as a surprise. While attending the University of Southern California (graduated 1990) she agreed to write songs for a friend, and a demo session was scheduled for the songs to be recorded by another singer. When the vocalist failed to turn up, Gray recorded them herself. She then met writer/producer Joe Solo while working as a cashier in Beverly Hills. Together, they wrote a large collection of songs and recorded them in Solo's studio. The demo tape landed Gray the opportunity to sing at jazz cafés in Los Angeles, California. Despite Gray's dislike of her own voice, Atlantic Records signed her. She began recording her debut record but was dropped from the label upon the departure of her A&R man Tom Carolan, who signed her to the label. In 1998, she landed a record deal with Epic Records. She was on one of the songs from The Black Eyed Peas' debut album, "Love Won't Wait".
Read more about this topic: Macy Gray
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)