Strings

If you happen to be one of the millions of listeners to harmonize to the hypnotizing hymnals of revered R&B marvels R. Kelly and Keith Sweat or drop it like it’s hot to the high-energy anthems of hip-hop powerhouse label Cash Money Records, chances are you’re already familiar with Strings’ captivating contralto vocals and vicious rap rhymes. You just don’t know it yet. But you will soon find out.

After making hit music alongside the likes of Lil Wayne, Keith Sweat, Twista and even the late Rick James, Strings finally steps from the backfield into the spotlight. And she is offering fans the best of both rap and R&B with her long-awaited solo mixtape High Maintenance in February 2011 and solo debut album in the summer.

“My music is a mixture of everything I’ve experienced in life,” explains Strings. “It’s love, it’s balling, hate, happiness, misery. It’s life. We go through all of those channels in life and I’m going to talk about them as I’ve experienced them. And I put it in a way that people can relate to it.”

People have been relating to her music for some time now. Born Marinna Teal on Chicago’s south side, Strings came up engulfed in music. She grew up singing in the church choir at the age of eight years old. Her father was a member of a jazz band when she was a child. And her grandfather, Aaron Moore, is a notable bluesman who cultivated Chicago’s classic boogie-woogie piano style that permeated the 1950s Chicago blues scene. At 90 years old, he is still gigging.

“I remember growing up watching my dad and my grandfather play their instruments and practice,” says Strings. “Music has always been in me.”

After graduation from Chicago Vocational High School, young, 18-year-old Marinna relocated to Oklahoma City, OK, where she started then started writing rhymes. One night out on the town, she attended an R. Kelly concert and happened to make her way backstage. When she got face to face with Kelly, she auditioned for him on the spot.

“I sang for him at first but by the time we were done, we ended up in the bathroom with him beating on a sink while I’m rapping,” she remembers. “We were in the bathroom for hours.”

Then one night out of the blue, she gets a mysterious phone call. “I was like ‘who is this?’ ‘It’s Rob,’” Strings confesses. “I didn’t expect him to call me. I guess I left an impression on him.

She continues, “He said I got this song that I need you to write a rap for. We did that a few times and he called me and said he needed me to fly to Miami to record the songs that I had written to.”

When it was all said and done, she had signed as a recording artist under R. Kelly and laid down verses for the heart-touching Number 1 Billboard single “Gotham City Remix” and sang background vocals on such hits as “Thank God It’s Friday,” “Be Happy” and “Not Gonna Hold On” from Kelly’s self-titled album.

While in the R Kelly camp, she recorded her Base Records/ Jive debut album but was never released. So after three years, a series of his singles and no solo release, Strings left the label and signed as a solo artist with Epic Records under a joint venture with the distributor and Keith Sweat.

She recorded her second full-length solo album with Epic, which like the first, never got released either. Two of the songs that she recorded for her album featured artists from Cash Money Records. Again a free agent, she got drafted by CMR. As a member of the Cash Money army, she sang vocals on a long list of jams, including the Big Tymers’ Number 1 single “Oh Yeah.”

But she eventually left CMR two weeks before Katrina because once again she waited on her debut album to drop. “They had their priorities and I wasn’t one of them,” she confesses. “I would rather not be signed somewhere than just sitting on the shelf. I could do that at home. So that’s what I decided to do.”

Now back in the full swing of things, she recently launched her own label High Maintenance Music. She owns her own online fashion accessories company Iron Lace Accessories and has a TV/film project in the works. And well aware of the formula for success, Strings is finally giving the world full doses of true talents with her long-awaited solo mixtape High Maintenance in March 2011 and solo debut album in the summer.

“My sound is so unique because I sing, I rap and I do them both well,” she details. “It’s a combination of the voice, the delivery and the things that I say. I’m just going to make great music.”