In between All I Have and its sequel, 2005's Touch, Harrison had produced Beyoncé's blockbuster hit Crazy In Love. I wanted to make sure that next time around I had some aggressive stuff, and lots of drums!"
"On that first album, I was really into writing chilled songs," she says, "but really, I loved up-tempo songs. Her debut, All I Have, surfaced in 2002 more muted and pop-orientated than what would follow, it was nevertheless enough of a success to guarantee Amerie a second album. I loved them." They began working on tracks that would win Amerie a contract with Columbia records, recording in the basement of Harrison's parents' home, Amerie singing her vocals from a beaten-up sofa, the Harrisons' washing machine poking into her back. "They were R&B but they weren't straight-laced, they had a hip-hop feel to them. And music always sounds better on a car stereo."Īmerie sang Harrison a couple of her songs, and he played her some beats he was working on. "I didn't want to meet at his place or mine, because I didn't know him yet. "We met at a McDonald's parking lot," she remembers. The manager of a local nightclub put her in touch with his buddy Rich Harrison, an up and coming producer who'd recently worked with Mary J Blige. It just loosened me up, I lost all my self-consciousness." I was really self-conscious, stiff, and that stiffness carried on for years. When I got back to Texas, all my friends would laugh at me when I tried to dance. I grew up in Germany, I didn't hear much soul music. "Just because you're black doesn't mean you can dance - it's more about being around other people who can dance. "I credit go-go music with loosening me up," she says. It was while in DC that she discovered go-go, the ultra-percussive mutation of funk and soul (and, later, hip-hop) that has defined the city's music since it surfaced in the late 1970s, but which, save the odd crossover single, has never really broken through to the outside world. Her weekends were spent writing songs and visiting nightclubs, singing for any vaguely industry people she met. I studied seven hours a day, totally overdid it," she laughs. I just figure a woman needs her wits about her. I don't have any moral objection, or anything. "Even when I was in high school, and my friends smoked marijuana, it was never something that I wanted to do. Her memories of Georgetown are, she says, a "blur", though not for the reasons that might typically cloud a graduate's recall. She still says I'll be a writer in my future." "Though my mother really wanted me to be an author. "I don't think they were too worried, because I was still going to college," she adds. Shortly before she enrolled at Georgetown University to study English Literature and Fine Arts, she announced to her parents that she was going to pursue a career in music. While in high school, she'd already begun writing and recording at home in her room, multitracking her vocals using two Dictaphones until she'd built up a song. My sister, though, was livid she'd scream 'I'll never do this to my kids!' And she sticks by that." Her sister Angela, still only 25, is now a successful lawyer, and Amerie is one of her clients.
I preferred to stay inside anyway, playing with my sister, or talking to my parents, or reading. We could only go out at the weekends, couldn't use the phone during the week. Korean was my first language, but I've forgotten much of it - when we moved back to America, mum spoke English at home, so I wouldn't struggle at school. "My Korean background is important to me, it's part of who I am. And it made me very close to my family - we were the only constants in each other's lives." "It also made me appreciate my alone time. Like, wouldn't you get bored?" Her peripatetic existence made her more confident, more extrovert, she says. To me, moving around was regular I couldn't imagine staying in one place forever. A year later, we moved to Germany, then Korea, then Alaska, then Texas, then Virginia, then New York, then back to Texas. "I was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1980. On her MySpace page, Amerie describes herself as a "military brat". As for the constant travelling of her life, well, that's all she's ever known.
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