With a Voice Like Raw Honey, R&B Singer Keyshia Cole Taps the Pain
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Keyshia wears a Dsquared2 jacket and (from left) rings by Roberto Coin, Movado, Georg Jensen by Jacqueline Rabun and De Beers. eyshia Cole is sitting in the woman who has seen the worst life has to corner of a dark offer ever truly believe in everlasting love? restaurant in New York City on a HOUSE OF PAIN summer night. She’s As with most spine-tingling soul singers, simply dressed in jeans, from Billie to Etta to Tina to Mary, life for flip-flops and a cream- Cole didn’t begin easily. The Oakland- colored blouse; if it weren’t born daughter of a former drug addict kfor the makeup left on from a and a prostitute, Cole was one of seven BET taping earlier that day, she siblings, some of whom she’s never met. would seem much younger than her 26 With her mother unable to care for her, years. Vacillating between certainty and Cole was placed in foster care at age 2, ambivalence, the platinum-selling artist with a family who would later adopt her. is speaking about breaking off her en- For years, Cole says, no one told her she gagement to a man she was with for a was adopted. Then at about age 7 she year and a half. The engagement came found a government check made out in complete with a diamond ring and a 10- her name, with her mother listed as the year-old would-be stepchild, her fiancé’s payee. “I asked her about it, and she said son. “It was me, him and the baby,” Cole it was none of my business,” recalls Cole. says, picking at her dinner. “It’s been “So I investigated and I found all these old hard because I really miss that child.” check stubs. When I asked her why she The breakup confounds her. She was getting money for me, that’s when brings it up over the phone one day and she told me the truth.” then again during dinner a week later. Cole remembers a childhood punctu- “I just couldn’t do it,” she says. “It’s ated with traumatic visits from her bio- weird. After this guy proposed to me, I logical mother. “She would come to the was like, dang, this is everything a house, and my foster mother would tell woman lives for: to be married, with a her to get away,” Cole says. “Then they’d ring, to be able to represent something. both be yelling, ‘That’s my baby! That’s But for me, it was the opposite. I was my baby!’ It was real hectic. I just remem- scared. When you get married, you be- ber my mother always leaving.” come one; you don’t live just for yourself For years Cole didn’t know anything anymore. I’m just not ready for that. I’m about her biological father, but recently not done with my goals in life. What’s a man approached her manager after a the word when you just kind of fall back show asking for a blood test, claiming to and let your man do the man thing? Sub- have been with her mother back in the mit? I’m all jacked up on that word. I just day. But Cole’s mother, who has kicked SOUL couldn’t submit. But I loved him. That’s her 20-year crack addiction and now the crazy thing about it.” lives with her famous daughter, insists She won’t share the name of her ex (al- the man couldn’t be her dad. “My though she’s widely rumored to have mother was like, ‘I was very out in the been linked with Atlanta-based rapper world at the time, but I know who your Young Jeezy). But his identity is hardly the father is, and it’s Sal,’ ” says Cole. “He’s point. Cole’s hesitation about love, the dead now, but I saw a picture of him and With a voice like raw honey, R&B singer Keyshia Cole taps the pain of her very emotion she soared to chart-topping he’s this short, fat full-Italian man. past to script songs that are beautiful, honest and unflinching. JEANNINE popularity singing about, reveals a funda- When I saw the picture, I said, ‘Ma, this AMBER gives us a close-up of the girl who says she’s Just Like You mental question about the artist: Can a is not my father! Get outta here.’ ” . DUMMY CREDIT PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG BROOM STYLING BY AGNES CAMMOCK DUMMY CREDIT 00 ESSENCE | MONTH 2007 visit essence.com visit essence.com OCTOBER 2007 | ESSENCE 179 SOUL SURVIVOR Keyshia sports a Jean Paul Gaultier dress, OGI Ltd. bangles, Georg Jensen by Lina Falkesgaard bangle, and (from left) rings by Pasha de Cartier, Movado, While her biological mother dipped in and out of her life, Lorraine Schwartz, VBH Soon after, an early version of “Love” made one constant female presence was her older sister Neffeteria, and Roberto Coin. For its way into the hands of Ron Fair, chairman of 27, whose own chaotic life played out in season one of Cole’s details, see Where to Buy. Geffen Records. “I listened to the track and im- reality show The Way It Is, which returns for its second season mediately felt her oppression and hopefulness this month on BET. While Cole grew up in foster care, Neffe- and sadness,” says Fair. “Keyshia had a tear in teria was raised by their grandmother, whom Cole would of- her voice and an authenticity that really spoke ten visit. As a child, Neffeteria and another young relative to me. It made me feel we could change the were brutally raped after two men broke into their home. Cole world.” He offered her a deal on the spot. believes that her cousin Andre, who was 9 at the time, was forced to watch. At 19, Andre put a bullet in his head. THE BEST IS YET TO COME “It did something to all of them,” Cole says. “The other Watch Cole onstage and it’s easy to see the girl, she just went crazy.” And Neffeteria’s confidence level swagger and heartbreak of a young Mary J. plummeted, recalls Cole. Suddenly her then 10-year-old sis- But the similarities can be misleading. Blige ter was acting grown, parading her body like a teenager. “I entered the music scene scarred and adrift. hated it because my sister was just gone,” says Cole now. “Af- By her own admission, she clung to drugs ter that it was a wrap.” and men, looking for solace. But Cole is the To this day, Cole worries about how the rape has affected opposite. Her troubled past has manifested her sister. Last January she invited Neffeteria and her three in a fierce and self-protective independence. young children to come live with her. But it hasn’t been easy. In the second episode of The Way It Is, Ron “Neffe and I, we don’t always get along,” she says of their re- Fair is seen repeatedly trying to offer Cole lationship. “Sometimes I think maybe I’m being mean for not help in wrangling artists for her new album understanding. Maybe she just needs someone to hug her. Just Like You, which drops September 25. Cole She’s been through a lot.” turns down his offer with a cool “I’ll be all right.” She wears this insistence like armor. ALL EYES ON KEYSHIA Her independence may be her greatest With a family history this fraught with troubles, one could strength, but it also shields her from anyone easily imagine Cole going down her own dark path. Mention who tries to get too close. Especially men. the possibility and Cole stiffens her back. “I’d die before “Sometimes other people feel like they know that,” she balks. “When she was on drugs, my mother used what’s best for you,” says Cole. “But I know to say to me, ‘You’re gonna end up just like me.’ But no, where I want to be. I see my future, and I’d sorry, I’m not. I’ve always kept my dignity, my morals and rather go ahead and knock that out myself. I my perspective because God always had my back. Even can’t risk creating misfortune or unhappi- though it very well could have been that type of situation ness right now. I work so hard to represent for me, I was raised in the church. My foster mother was myself well; for me to let anyone else drive pastor, and I know God very well. He’s like my father, and my vehicle beside God, it’s like, no. I’m not He just made sure I was always okay.” even looking for anybody. I don’t want any- Cole was 6 when she started singing over at her best body. I just can’t.” friend’s house, the two of them trying to outdo her adopted In the first leg of promoting Just Like You, the brother, an aspiring rapper. When she was 12, her brother intro- not your fault. But guys are gonna want to have sex with you. You ““I’ve always kept singer sits on the red sofa of BET’s 106 and Park, fielding questions duced her to fellow Oakland native MC Hammer. Determined to gotta watch them.’ I’m like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ I was only a about her life. At one point there’s an undercurrent of discomfort parlay the meeting into an opportunity, Cole called the studio daily, kid.