Joi

“I bet you thought I wasn’t ever gonna come back, didn’t you? You thought I’d left and abandoned you and abandoned all that we hold true and sacred with real music and real artistry and expression.

Who cares if you don’t have the greatest voice in the world. You just do what the hell you do. Here it is, just like I promised: Kitty Cat’s return.”
Star Kitty’s Revenge

These words, spoken by Joi at the beginning of her new CD, Star Kitty’s Revenge, are not just rhetorical odds and ends pieced together to create a catchy segue to a series of tracks. They are an expression of creative longing, a declaration of creative freedom, conquering, re-affirming pearls of enlightenment and inspiration. Its not easy being a musical purist but Joi fights the good fight. As on her previous recordings, 1994’s Pendulum Vibe and 1997’s Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, Joi has created in Star Kitty’s Revenge, her first CD for Universal Records, a bounty of thought-provoking, conscience-bristling treasures brimming with innovation, courage and ingenuity.

Referring to the album as a “healthy vent,” Joi covers a range of topics and emotions. Her heart is like a sieve, harboring no secrets, no inhibitions, and no hang-ups. Neither pain nor fear nor rage is held hostage in the name of discretion or decorum. But then, total honesty is what Joi knows best.

On this album, the Nashville native culls stories from her life and pulls out bittersweet truths she’s discovered along the way. “I had to just go ahead and write what I had learned,” she states. “Somebody asked me, “Joi, do you need a hug?” after they listened to the record. They were like “You are mad as hell.” I had some angry moments on there but it’s a healthy vent. I don’t think anything that I said I said maliciously. I think that I really told the truth and I tried to back up the things I said, especially in the interludes.”

The journey into the mind of Star Kitty (Joi’s nickname) begins with the funky “It’s Your Life,” a song about personal freedom. The chorus urges, “Shake what your mama gave you/ It took her nine damn months to make you and it’ll only take one minute to take you out.” The message: “Live your life as only you can do/Forget the ones that don’t seem to approve.”

Next stop is the soulful “17 Inches of Snow,” a hypnotic tune driven by a wicked bass line and emotion-packed vocals. Joi says the song conjures up special memories. “It reminds me of the day we buried my father [football great Joe Gilliam]. It was a blizzard in Nashville and we were pulling into the cemetery…. It looked like something out of a movie: those large tombstones, snow on top of them…. I remember that song coming on right when we were going into the cemetery and it was so appropriate.”

The album’s first single, Dallas Austin’s “Missing You,” reincarnates old school soul. “Missing You” was a little weird for me to do,” says Joi. “I felt good about it but it felt like such a far cry from what I was used to doing. But that’s a part of me too, old soul music, that’s what I came up on.”

Growing up, Joi was consumed by creativity. “I was raised heavily in the arts: theatre, music and dance. I’ve been knowing I wanted to sing since I was five, when Debbie Boone came out with ‘You Light Up My Life’.” Joi attended Memphis State and Tennessee State where she majored in English and Theatre Arts. “I dropped out to pursue music full time,” she says. Her pursuits took her to Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and ultimately Atlanta but it was on her native soil that she met her creative soul mate, producer Dallas Austin.

“I met Dallas in 1991 in Nashville and we developed an instant bond,” she recalls, explaining that they each “had what the other one needed. I think he was looking for a muse. I was looking for somebody who believed in my abilities and I think we just clicked because we were able to recognize that…. It really worked and still to this day when we get together and make music it turns out incredible.” Out of the Joi/Austin union came her groundbreaking debut album Pendulum Vibe, a project that instantly established Joi as a new-age soul/rock/funk diva and garnered widespread critical acclaim.

But the album’s sales were modest and a disappointed Joi needed to exhale. “I left, went to London for a minute just to regroup because the album didn’t do well.” She stayed there a month and was welcomed home by news that her song “Freedom” from The Pendulum Vibe would be used for the soundtrack to Mario van Pebbles film, “Panther.” “They wanted all the sisters in the industry to be part of it. That was a really big honor,” she enthuses.

Even in the wake of disappointing record sales, fans and the industry would not let go of Joi. She received massive press coverage, lent her statuesque frame to Calvin Klein Jeans and toured extensively. ” I became very well known for my live shows and all of that kept me going, it kept me alive,” she recalls. And then Joi fell in love. The object of her affections: fellow Atlanta artist Big Gipp of Goodie Mob. In 1996 the couple gave birth to a beautiful little girl, Keypsiia Blue Daydreamer. And life, as she knew it, changed. “I realized that if I had chosen to have a family and I had also chosen to have a career, one was going to have to suffer while the other was being established. My husband’s career was going well at the time….Somebody had to be the emotional anchor and it had to be me. I did that without thought. It had to be done.”

Shortly thereafter, Joi completed Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, an un-released cult classic that boasted tantalizing vocal performances and a dazzling array of soul-drenched covers (LaBelle’s “You Turn Me On” and Betty Davis “If I’m Lucky”). The album’s single, “Ghetto Superstar,” had just begun to find its footing when both EMI (for whom the album was recorded) and Austin’s Freeworld collapsed.

Disappointed but undaunted, Joi shopped for another deal. “I broke my contractual association with Dallas and after talking to several labels, I landed at Universal and signed with them in 2000.”

At the end of that same year, Joi accepted an invitation from Raphael Saadiq to join Lucy Pearl, replacing original member Dawn Robinson. “I thought that might be something cool to be associated with,” she says. “As long as it was gonna be conducive to my career, I was with it. People need to know that there is a certain amount of regularity to me and that is why I joined the group just to make myself more accessible.”

But Joi was already accessible. She was already part of our musical experiences, having set the stage — through Pendulum and Amoeba — for the sound that characterizes much of today’s neo-soul music.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” she muses. “Obviously with critical acclaim there doesn’t come much money but there comes a lot of respect and there comes a good feeling and a good taste in peoples mouths when they think about you and they think about wanting to work with you. Critical acclaim and respect can keep you alive in this business and it did that for me. But the lack of commercial success meant not being exposed to the masses; thus when someone else came out that was similar to me it seemed as though that was something that they invented, that they created as opposed to knowing that it was something I inspired. That was a little difficult.”

Difficult but not devastating. Joi continues to move forward without changing her tune despite those who question the so-called marketability of her sound. “It’s very difficult when someone is constantly telling you how that’s not marketable and how you can’t make any money off that, how people don’t want to think that hard, how nobody wants to be told these things but I beg to differ. Not with the response that I’ve gotten, not when the fact remains that I’ve sold really no records but everybody continues to be inspired by what I do. I just don’t believe that.”

But when has Joi ever believed anything other than what¹s in her heart? When has she ever doubted who she is or questioned her instincts? She has always known that true freedom is rooted in total, uncompromising honesty and she has always believed that real art, real music that comes from the soul will speak to the soul. She knows and has proven that real art will always find a home