Rarely does a young artist make an entrance as confident, well-rounded and flawless as SRP/SRC/Universal Motown singer-songwriter SHONTELLE. Her debut single “T-Shirt” has zoomed into the top 30 of iTunes most-downloaded Top Songs chart, and within a month of release to radio, has rammed the national Top 20 in pop-formatted airplay, spinning at over 150 mainstream Top 40 and rhythmic-crossover radio stations across America. The serene and sensual “T-Shirt” video clip has drawn over 1.1 million audio streams on the artist’s MySpace.com page and a similar number of video hits on YouTube.com.
NEW YORK (Business Wire EON) October 10, 2008 --
Rarely does a young artist make an entrance as confident, well-rounded
and flawless as SRP/SRC/Universal Motown singer-songwriter SHONTELLE. Her
debut single “T-Shirt”
has zoomed into the top 30 of iTunes most-downloaded Top Songs chart,
and within a month of release to radio, has rammed the national Top 20
in pop-formatted airplay, spinning at over 150 mainstream Top 40 and
rhythmic-crossover radio stations across America. The serene and sensual “T-Shirt”
video clip has drawn over 1.1 million audio streams on the artist’s
MySpace.com page and a similar number of video hits on YouTube.com.
And it gets better from there…much
better. SHONTELLE’s debut album SHONTELLIGENCE,
is a state-of-the-art, magnetic and musically comprehensive playlist for
today’s global pop and urban music fan -- an
unmistakable giant step onto center stage for the 23-year old native of
Bridgetown, Barbados. The album is scheduled for release on November 18,
2008, through SRP Records’ affiliation with
SRC, the Universal Motown-distributed imprint of hip-hop entrepreneur
and urban marketing innovator Steve Rifkind, making her the label-mate
of the SRC platinum-plus artists Akon and David Banner. SHONTELLE’s
debut also features the idealistic and inspiring “Battle
Cry,” which was chosen for the unique
all-star CD/download compilation Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots
Movement, developed for the Presidential campaign of Illinois Sen.
Barack Obama.
In the eleven songs of SHONTELLIGENCE,
she takes ownership of a musical palette that broadens and deepens with
each successive track. Throughout the album, SHONTELLE’s
voice is assertive and exuberant, with an impressive lyrical
consciousness enveloping a boundary-busting pop-urban spectrum, from the
multicultural riddim-centric soca of “Roll”
and “Focus Pon Me,”
to the reggae tracks “Life is Not an Easy
Road,” “Crave You,”
“Flesh and Bone.”
There’s also a literate and progressive
neo-soul vibe to “Superwoman,”
“Plastic People”
and “Ghetto Lullaby,”
and a retro/alternative urban note in “Cold
Cold Summer.”
Like the most talented of today’s young
entertainers, Shontelle Layne made her mark first as a writer,
co-composing the award-winning soca smash and girl-power anthem “Roll”
in 2005. Producer/songwriters Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken of SRP
Records, whose production company had previously discovered and launched
fellow Bajan native Rihanna as a worldwide superstar, had sought to
contact the writer of “Roll”
with a view to creating a cover for the international market. They were
first stunned, and then delighted, to recognize that the hit songwriter
-- and straight-A entertainment law student -- had all the makings of a
world-class performer as well. “We couldn’t
believe that Shontelle was such a great singer, and so young and
beautiful, and hadn’t been discovered yet,”
says Rogers.
Over a year and a half of focused work and patient development,
Shontelle joined the SRP production company, and recorded her album,
co-writing with producers Sturken and Rogers, and collaborating with
other A-list hitmakers, including Wayne Wilkins and Andrew Frampton (“T-Shirt”)
Stargate (“Superwoman”)
and the Heavyweights and the Jam (“Battle Cry”),
as well as the hometown Barbados-based teams Classic Soul (“Focus
Pon Me”) and De Red Boys (“Crave
You”). She signed with Steve Rifkind’s
SRC Records early in 2008.
Defining “intelligence”
recently to an interviewer as “the gathering
of new knowledge or information, the ability to comprehend and profit
from experience,” SHONTELLE reflected
that “knowledge…feeds
my life and my music. The more I learn, the more I want to learn...the
more I grow as a person, and as an artist.”
Expose yourself to true SHONTELLIGENCE
at:
http://www.myspace.com/shontelle
www.shontellemusic.com
Preview ‘BATTLE CRY’
at:
http://www.barackobama.com/music/
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