Lady sings the Blues

Gilbert wanted to attend Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts. She even got in, though as a piano player--she was something of a prodigy, having played the instrument since she was 6. But her mother wouldn't allow Chonita to attend Arts Magnet, insisting she go to the Business Magnet instead. She could always be an artist, her mother said, but better to have some business skills behind her just in case she made it--or didn't. "I was very sad," she says about not being able to attend Booker T. Washington, where Erika Wright was going to school before she became Erykah Badu.

Gilbert got married when she was 18, moved to Hawaii to live with her husband, and the two had a child. But she was away from Texas for only 18 months; she missed her family too much. She would be divorced by the time she was 21. When she came back to Dallas, she bounced around from junior college to junior college, then finally enrolled at Southern Methodist University. She graduated with a degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing.

Gilbert decided she wanted to be a fiction writer, never thinking she'd pursue a career in music. She submitted a collection of short stories to an agent, who told her that young writers would do better trying to sell a novel. If anything, she figured maybe she'd become a songwriter. Eventually, she'd take temp jobs and finally end up working at a bank, hating every second of the mundane career treadmill. The only thing that provided her any solace was the fact that she'd recorded a few demos. But even that was frustrating, as she could never find anyone compatible to work with.

That would change in 1995, when she found herself going to Onasale, a Deep Ellum art gallery run by her cousin. There, Gilbert discovered a burgeoning, underground music scene full of aspiring hip-hop musicians and soul singers who turned the gallery into a weekend boho refuge. Ty Macklin of Shabazz 3 was there. So, too, were Badu, who had performed with Gilbert in a musical at the South Dallas Cultural Center, and the Los Angeles-born Chinwah. Badu and Chinwah were old friends who'd been writing and performing together for almost a decade. They had met at KNON-FM when both were in local hip-hop acts--Chinwah in DK Mack (which released an album in 1988), Badu as part of the duo Suga and Spice. Badu even appeared on Chinwah's 1995 self-titled, self-released gospel record, and he would go on to co-write two songs on Badu's 1997 platinum-selling debut Baduizm, "Rimshot" and "Certainly." He is also working with Badu on her second studio album.

Chinwah, who can play more instruments than an orchestra, says the very first time he heard Gilbert sing, he was, quite simply, astonished. "I had never heard a female artist sing with that much soul and depth and musicality," he recalls. "I had to work with her."

Within 24 hours of first meeting, they had written their first song together, "The Meeting," which would end up four years later on Little Lost Girls Blues. Indeed, it's the album's highlight, from-the-gut jazz as performed by a woman who had never listened to Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan before Badu encouraged her to begin scatting during their early days at the gallery. "The Meeting" is a revelation, morphing into nothing but sheer vibe the longer it plays. Every vowel drips with transcendent feeling until the lyrics become a moot point. The song reveals everything on the surface, but gives you even more just beneath the burnished veneer.

By 1996, Badu had gotten her record deal with Universal and, as she'd always promised, took a few friends along for the ride. Gilbert, now known as N'Dambi (or butterfly), was one of them. By 1997, she was Badu's regular backup singer, going on a road that would take a girl from Oak Cliff all over the world, singing behind the woman who was going to save R&B from the faceless, voiceless assembly-line divas. She became known as "The Girl with the Afro," even had her own groupies, but never stopped recording her own music with Chinwah. Gilbert appears on Badu's 1997 Live album, where Badu thanks her for being "the reason why I sing." The two remain the closest of friends.

Yet Gilbert's association with Badu didn't lead to her own deal with Universal or Kedar Massenburg, who signed Badu to his Universal imprint. Not that she's at all disappointed, though she wouldn't mind making Massenburg regret his decision not to sign her. And to their credit, Gilbert and manager Odis Johnson will not put a sticker on Little Lost Girls Blues advertising N'Dambi as Badu's backup singer. They will let the disc, which is available at smaller local record stores and over the Internet (www.cheekyi.com), stand on its own merits.