Truth Hurts - Ready Now
Single: Ready Now
Truth Hurts (the R&B sensation who scored a 2002 smash with the club jam “Addictive”), has a new album out on 4 October 'Ready Now'
This is Truth's first album for Pookie Records, the label founded by former Tony Toni Tone' lead singer Raphael Saadiq as an independent recording haven for artists with transcendent creative sensibilities.
Truth and Raphael began creating Ready Now in October of 2003, a process that has been most refreshing and invigorating for the singer/songwriter. “I welcomed in more creative forces,” she states, citing contributing writer/producers such as Kelvin Wooten and new Pookie signing Baj. “I wrote a lot of the first album, so I wanted to open myself to some other more musical things. This time, youare not going to see me without a live band.
The results include the lovely first single/title track “Ready Now,” a song that will immediately reveal a softer side to Truth. Also on the album is “Knock Knock (Always At My Door)” featuring Raphael as a vocalist. Raphael also wrote “Lifetime,” a ballad so deep, Truth swears it's going to “change the game.” “The track is beautiful,” she shares. “He plays banjo on the hook and this other weird guitar that sits up like a keyboard. It's mid-tempo with some bottom but lovely.” West Coast production kingBattlecat contributed the slammin' “Love You Better.” And then there's the provocative “Phone Sex,” on which Truth breaks down a concept she calls “The Mobile Kama Sutra,” reprising a bit of the mesmerizing Middle Eastern vibe (with a touch of Africa) that made “Addictive” so… addictive. “It's not as blatant as it sounds,” she insists. “It takes you into a dream world. I'm just being a woman.”
A LITTLE HISTORY.........It was at an audition for Hands On (a girl group that Andre “Dr. Dre” Young was attempting to assemble for his then-new Aftermath Records imprint) that Shari met the man who would launch her into the spotlight. Though Shari didn't make the group. Dre phoned Shari and offered her a solo recording contract, eventually naming her “Truth Hurts” because she was, “that chick who would tell you about yourself.” Dre took Truth on the road with him for the 2000 “Up In Smoke” tour (the sole female and singer among rappers Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Xzibit), then took her in the studio to make her debut album, Truthfully Speaking.
The album debuted on June 25, 2002, at the #5 position of Billboard's Top 200 chart on the strength of the intoxicatingly exotic single, “Addictive.”
That #1-charting smash was a DJ Quik-produced amalgam of an old B.T. Express beat, a guest rap by the legendary Rakim and a key sample from the Hindi film score nugget “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai” by Bappi Lahiri (featuring the haunting voice of Lata Mangeshkar). The stars all appeared aligned for a masterful debut. Unfortunately, failure to clear the Lahiri sample in a timely fashion resulted in a copyright lawsuit. Further complications with her second single “The Truth” being produced by R. Kelly (with legal troubles of his own) sealed the fate of Truthfully Speaking to “far below expectations,” resulting in her leaving the label.
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