IN the nineties she wowed audiences with her hybrid sound – even if it left her record label perplexed.
And three decades on from her biggest single, I Know, Dionne Farris looks like she’s barely aged.
The fashion-loving artist often shares her forward-thinking, unique style on social media. Videos and pictures show she has a penchant for large eyewear, jazzy shirts and chunky jewellery.
The US star, 54, is best known for catchy pop track I Know, which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
It was co-written by Milton Davis and Farris’s good friend William DuVall, who now fronts rock band Alice In Chains following original singer Layne Staley’s death from drugs in 2002.
The track’s success elevated Farris, who was nominated for a Grammy in 1996, to the top of the musical pile in the mid 90s.
However, she struggled to follow its success commercially, which she claims was due to her label’s inability to know what to do with her.
She told Pop Matters in 2009: “At the beginning, they were like, ‘We don’t know what to do’ and they really didn’t know what to do.
“I did a lot of touring and I did a lot of college tours. I was on tour with Dave Matthews. When I went to the black colleges, they were like, ‘Well we can’t play ‘I Know’ because it’s not our format but we love the ’11th Hour’. Can we play that?’ I had no jurisdiction to say ‘yes’.
“‘I Know’ was the first single and I was like, ‘That’s cool, but you guys (Columbia) got to remember that I came from Arrested Development. That’s a very diverse crowd’.”
Arrested Development was an early 90s girl group that recruited Farris to sing with them, though she never wanted to officially become a member.
Of her three contributions, Tennessee is the best known, reaching number six in the States.
Farris continued: “‘I Know’ is a very pop-oriented song and what I suggested was why don’t we take the ’11th Hour’, which is about my whole departure from Arrested Development, and service that crowd with that song? They’re like, ‘That’s not how it works’.”
The mum-of-one has been operating as an independent artist since the early noughties.
Her first LP with complete artistic control was 2011’s Signs of Life. She went on to release two more albums Dionne Get Your Gunn and DionneDionne.
