Even amid such fine-as-wine singing beauties as Cindy Herron, Terry Ellis, and Maxine Jones, it was Robinson’s blazing voice and sugar-shack wiggle that brought the heat to such torrid singles and videos as “Hold On,” “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It),” and the rocking “Free Your Mind.”
En Vogue with Dawn Robinson
Dawn Robinson’s doe-eyed, full-lipped eroticism first came to the pop forefront in 1990 as part of the fine Bay Area-based female quartet En Vogue. Produced by the talented musical team of Thomas McElroy and Denzil Foster, En Vogue’s mixture of skillfully soulful singing and ultrafashionable flair led its first two albums on EastWest Records — 1990’s Born to Sing and 1992’s aptly titled Funky Divas — to the land of multiplatinum sales.
“They were the first truly videogenic group,” says music journalist Tom Terrell. “Not only did they raise the artistic bar for all black videos to a higher level, but they also brought the notion of a singing group back into the nation’s consciousness.”
There were guest spots on Roe, Hang in’ With Mr. Cooper, In Living Color, A Different World, Saturday Night Live, and The Tonight Show. There were concert tours with MC Hammer, Freddie Jackson, Luther Vandross, and solo jaunts as well. There were Soul Train Awards, MTV Awards, Image Awards, American Music Awards. There was a successful collaboration with hiphop’s Salt-n-Pepa on “Whatta Man.” There was even a Diet Coke commercial (directed by Spike Lee, no less).
But by the 1997 release of EV3, Robinson was gone from the group. Predictably, record-industry rumors ran rampant, but this much was true: Robinson had signed with, arguably, rap’s greatest producer, Dr. Dre, and a solo album was in the offing. Fans were drooling at the idea. Meanwhile, the En Vogue-as-trio album stiffed.
And then … nothing. No Dre/Dawn disc. In fact, no Dawn at all. Robinson for all intents and purposes dropped out of sight.
Until the year 2000 rolled around. That’s when Robinson suddenly resurfaced as one-third of the R&B supergroup Lucy Pearl. Sporting a deliciously boho countenance — dig those piercings, Dawn — she joined forces with megatalents RaphaeI Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné! and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad to create an intoxicating brew of sinuous, subtle soul for the group’s eponymous debut. Besides effortlessly floating on such catchy grooves as “Dance Tonight,” Robinson displayed considerable dramatic depth (and anger) on weightier fare like “They Can’t” and “Hollywood.” Album and concert reviews were mainly raves.
Then another break up. Robinson seemed on the outs yet again.
Dawn Robinson’s blazing voice and sugar-shack wiggle brought heat to En Vogue. Now her long-awaited solo album is primed to burn up the charts.
That is, until now. For Dawn, Robinson’s long-awaited solo album on Q Records, scheduled to drop on January 29, Robinson has put together a solid, impressive effort, ranging form the impassioned “Get Up” to the dreamy “Get It Off” to the stutterstep funk of “Envious” and “Fed Up.” In fact, it’s almost as impressive and interesting as her career so far.
Born in New London, Connecticut, on November 28, 1968, Robinson recalls her childhood as a very good one. “As good as it could be,” Dawn says. “My mother, Barbara Robinson, was a single woman raising two daughters alone.” Since Dawn’s father, John Robinson, was based in New York, he wasn’t around very much. “I think I gained a lot of strength from my mother because she had to make it on her own,” Dawn says. “We were on welfare for a little while; then after she went to school she went to work at a hospital.” A proud Robinson adds, “A trade she still works at today.”
Music was a constant. “I grew up singing,” Dawn says. At nine, she joined a local church choir. Robinson began to realize what a special talent she had in 1979 when her mother brought home the late Minnie Riperton’s album Minnie as a gift. “I was so into her, I chased my mom around the room,” remembers Dawn, talking about the vocalist she calls her biggest influence. She also proceeded to astound her family: At 11, Robinson could almost match Riperton’s multioctave range note for note.
In 1981, Dawn, her younger sister Dana, and their mother moved to California’s Bay Area. “My father had moved out to Los Angeles,” Dawn says. “My mother, in a sense, followed my dad, and we settled down in Oakland. Also, my mom wanted us to have a better life. A lot of my friends in New London were sexually active and getting pregnant. She saw what was going on and moved us out of there.”
Dawn says she was a shy but popular teenager. Musically she was into rock and new-wave bands like the Ramones, the B-52s, Blondie, Journey, and the Clash. She started doing gigs around the Bay Area, sessions with regional acts, and background vocals in local clubs. “My mother would have to escort me to the clubs because I was underage, then I’d have to stay put in a storage room until showtime so I didn’t threaten their liquor license. I was so innocent that I’d sing a song like ‘Sugar Walls’ and have no idea what it meant.”
In 1988 she was at a concert when a man named J.R. approached her, saying he was in the entertainment industry. Under the watchful eye of her mother, Robinson sang for him. Impressed, he told her about an audition for a girl group.
“I was so intimidated,” Robinson says. “There were so many talented singers there. I saw Cindy Herron, who had this fine reputation.” Another familiar face was Maxine Jones. “We’d met about two months prior in a salon where she used to braid hair.” The three ladies took turns doing backgrounds on a tune called “Waiting on You,” ironically enough, while awaiting the arrival of Terry Ellis, who was flying in from her native Houston.
When the dust had settled, the group basically consisted of four lovely strangers. Robinson claims the musical input they had with their producers was minimal. “It was pretty much a dictatorship-type situation,” she says. “In the beginning, Denny was like a brother to us while teaching us the ropes, so to speak.”
En Vogue toured to great praise. Two sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall were especially thrilling, particularly during “Giving Him Something He Can Feel,” when their security force selected at random a male member of the audience and sat him onstage for a group lap dance. “We would just torture him,” she says with a laugh. “Maxine would sit on their laps or blow in their ears. My butt would be in their faces doing the chocolate shake. One guy actually fell backwards in the chair.”
Even with all that sexual tension, Robinson says the fab foursome rarely got hit on. “We didn’t have too many groupies. It was a different story when I was in Lucy Pearl.” She was constantly hit on after Lucy Pearl shows by both male and female fans. “In fact, more women were into me. It was crazy.”
Crazy also describes Robinson’s take on En Vogue’s earlier deteriorating financial situation. “We were broke. B-R-O-K-E! One time Maxine was going to go to the unemployment office, and I had to beg her not to because of the possible press attention. All the time I was in En Vogue, none of us made a million dollars. Maybe all as a group, but not individually.”
Robinson says she was vocal about her dissatisfaction. “The four of us got $40,000 as an advance for our first album. That’s $10,000 a girl, $5,000 up front and the rest upon the record’s completion. Back then I was happy to get it. Then for Funky Divas we got offered $40,000 again. And do you know that we took that money and we were happy to take it and we didn’t question it? So by the third album I said to the girls, ‘I don’t appreciate that we are being asked to take $40,000 yet again. That is unheard of.’ We’d made the label over $80 million. The girls didn’t agree, and they turned on me because I was speaking up for myself and the group.”
According to Robinson, her end with En Vogue came when the other members, record company reps, and attorneys were waiting for her at what she had thought was going to be a creative meeting. She was given an ultimatum: Sign on for the next couple of years or leave En Vogue. Robinson was stunned, but she made her decision. “I told them they didn’t have to wait for my answer: I choose me.”
Robinson still says that she truly loved the other En Vogue members. “We were great friends, we were like sisters. We laughed a lot.” Does she believe they thought she would walk out? “No,” she insists. “We’d almost finished the third album, which after I left became EV3.” (Except for the hit “Don’t Let Go,” her vocals were all but wiped off EV3.)
Robinson signed with Dr. Dre and lnterscope Records. But her prospective Dre-produced solo album never came out. “Dre just had so many other obligations before I signed with him. I did vocals for him for the Firm album, but that’s about it.” She waited eight months for his schedule to clear; then, with Dre’s blessing, she moved on. Robinson still appreciates the experience. “It gave me time to chill, meet good people like Snoop Dogg, work on my writing, and meet other talented producers.”
Then came Lucy Pearl. “I’d known Raphael since I was 16,” says Robinson. “He asked me to join Ali Shaheed Muhammad and him, literally just before I signed a deal with RCA Records. He told my manager it was only going to be a one-off thing. One year, one album. My manager thought I wouldn’t be interested.” She was wrong. “First off, the Tonys are the bomb to me. And I loved A Tribe Called Quest. Credibility-wise, I felt we were getting something from each other.”
Robinson ’s deal with RCA fell through, and she signed with Saadiq’s independent label, Pookie Records. Then, shortly before the Lucy Pearl album was released in 2000, Robinson says she had financial problems. “The record was supposed to be released in November of 1999. It was February, and still hadn’t been. I lost a lot, including my house. Someone told me that when I lost my house I lost the old memories — all the bad stuff from En Vogue — and now I was on to the new. Hey, it’s just a house. It’s not my life.”
The best part of the Lucy Pearl experience is that Robinson got artistic freedom in the studio. “The guys accepted my ideas and I was allowed to create,” she explains. Her newfound confidence is apparent throughout her new album, Dawn. “I made it through two groups and came out the other side fine,” she says. “I stand strong like a mountain. Immovable. You can have floods, fires, erosion, but the mountain pretty much still stands. I’m okay.”
Despite all the good feelings, Dawn Robinson’s first solo album Dawn did not exactly enjoy commercial success, failing to reach either the US Billboard 200 or the R&B/Hip-Hop Album charts. Apparently things got even worse after that, but she has set out with a new YouTube venture, so hopefully that keeps us all in touch (and makes her some money). Sad to say, but sometimes raw talent will not be enough.
