hello and welcome to the r and b show up close and personal i'm your host venus and i'm here to take you through this musical dance we call life and to do that you know i bring on the best in the business to give us tips to help us make it through the day today my guest is no stranger to me and she won't be a stranger to you at the end of this she will always be someone very close to me and i me tell you she is one of if not the best singers in the world on the planet think of  houston celine dion patti labelle landa adams put them all together and you get the voice of my girl there's in the house today ok she's been doing a lot of things i met her about five six years ago maybe six or seven years ago she was in a lot of big things since then she's going to tell us all about it she's the empress of r and b she is none other than miss natasha see coward hey on my glasses so i can i think let's get up close and personal all right all right so now you have this wonderful voice that you've been gifted and you've been doing it for a long time you told me you never did any training or anything when did you realize you had this voice very early on and you know as a young child i knew i can sing along this i'm and that you don't have to be in the background which is sister you can be yeah but i stayed you know i stayed in the background and i let my youngest sister do because she was the baby so we thought it was cute but the older we got you know they stop singing and that's something that's a part of me that's always been deep down inside of me and i just continued on and what were your dreams back back ok we're on the track to doing that yes we are most definitely will say ok well i want to go back to how i met you back with no warning signs i won't tell the story  after because i was you know so early in the morning and i sleep the rest of the aca yeah exactly honey when this girl hits six bars forget it i was like give me my yes you did ok and it's been a wonderful relationship ever since yesterday and we talked about no warning signs the cd that you had out now that cd is still going strong yes yes so did you think that it would continue to be so hot this long honestly i just make the music and just hope that the mumbly will enjoy it and thank god they have been enjoying it not here just here in the states but also overseas yes i want to hear about that i want to hear about that so interview yeah ok so now natasha told me the songs and i did a review on the cd when i first met her and i named the song what i thought it was and in the middle of a concert t anyway i will not read radiant your songs and rename them i promise that maybe i don't know but anyway every single song on this cd is good and everyone tells a story and i'm just excited that guess what about six years old yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i see it going down as a classic which is good yes and you know if you can play this music ok where in two thousand and we're still to write your own songs or collaborate with others about that what you're hearing today on the radio right let's stop there for a minute when you bring up the use do you do any mentoring for young singers i've been asked to give vocal lessons i'm not a vocal teacher right i can't teach you different techniques i like you said earlier i never have vocal lessons so anything that i do you know is is a gift from god and so i don't want to get a p s a because i can do this you should do this you know vocal training so you is clear now you can do that yes ok yes right now she's got i put it on my facebook page did you see it yes i did put on my facebook page i was like no this is not a recent so i'm listening to that you know late at night while i'm preparing  know and good music makes me cry and this show the promise started about music and i always tell people i could think of a song for everything anything that happens there's a song for it you know and sometimes if i'm feeling that way i  don't have anything to say i put the song it sure and there you know and when i heard you do i think we would discuss it at the radio and i said have you ever done that right yeah and you said that was your favorite a you know it's very hard to find a team tell me about how you got yours joe hamm has been with me the band member he's been with me the longest and we just surround ourselves with good quality god fearing  people my girl tracy my long time yes she's my personal assistant she's been with me for the longest tony been with me for the past five years you know everybody just true but it's true they keep me grounded and you know i try to surround myself with people they're not going to be like a kiss up to tell me things that i want to hear they tell me the truth whether i like it or not right so you know i try to surround myself with understand people are like i said it's really really hard to get a team president is yes you know and then you have people sometimes you think are on your side but they're not exactly you know and it's and i know i talk to people about it all the time about how they get in and i'm always amazed and sometimes people say it's people you know that they worked with or people who are very but i also find that you need to have people and you tell me whether this is true or not because you know you guys are the expert on this you need to have people that are on the same page as you are as well lan have see the see the vision right right that's very important because if your team don't believe in what you're doing in your project right there's no need to have that person you know down with you because they're not going to fight  to get you where to that next level you want to be at so they have to believe in support you know what it is that you're doing that's true it's true so you're an independent artist correct yesterday or you want to you have your own label why can't my own production company in right now the whole label thing i think that's something that the near future we might be looking to do you know just because we're doing what the label do anyway so then how do you get  your music from the form it's an m p three cd whatever to the cd to sell to become this well you know you can go out like the first cd we did major distribution with now rogers distribution company but no warning signs we just did word of mouth we put it on all the music outlets amazon cd baby website we had it where people can purchase it yes oh yes so do you think it's hard being an independent artist not being a part of a label is hard when it comes to having the outlets that the labels have to the distribution the labels have but the great thing about being an independent artist is you control you know you control what goes on where as far as a label they will tell you what they want you to do as independent artist i'm doing what tosh want to do not what somebody say i have to do right but it's hard but if this is what you want to do and you believe in what you do you hustle and you get on the ground and do what you need to do so what keeps you motivated i want to sing the next generation yeah it was it was a wonderful experience so you're not doing those two anymore now ok not anymore than you know when i saw you in saying harlem saying i was like that's all she going to cook she had like again and she please have the mike again because but i'm partial but you know i want you guys to pick up the cd and i was told i love talk you know this but i was told by her manager that she's going to come back and same for us at some point so then you will see we may even hopefully be able to go out where she is in record but anyway so you did what else did you do i was there was a musical call what was  ok so we need to make it to the rest of my question so have you been abroad i haven't been overseas and i just been you know throughout the united states before i mean doing shows and things here  but my me it's being played abroad on radio station u k radio station out there so i'm just keeping my fingers for us and prana thinking that it yeah sooner than later i'll be overseas you know you  should try to do that because everybody that comes here and talks to me that they make it bigger over there and then they come back and that's the way it was years ago right and it's still like that yesterday you know so if you go over there it's like they treat you i mean we love our people here but they teach treat you much better our broad like the reason why the army bistro the radio station was created for the radio show was great it was to promote folks like you who have phenomenal voices phenomenal talent phenomenal work that's not being played in heavy rotation right that bothers me still so that's why i'm still doing this to let people know because i want to have you out here too spine i'm not telling any tales chills anyway next question no emotion no what did you like better going out and performing or making records  yeah i love performing live and anyway i i need some shows i hear because sometimes i can make it a way out there where you are and talk about singing maybe i'll get a happy birthday my birthday  i'll get a happy birthday just for you anyway so let's just go back to a new cd that i think you you should be having in the works life has life given you because the songs you're writing there are about what's happening with life right yeah  things that went on in my life things that went on in people's lives you know closer to me you know i just vibe off their experience my experience and start creating music so has life given you any challenges that you can write some new stuff about almost definitely ye upstairs yeah yeah so how do you think music i say to people that music is in everything in our life i start to show with saying it's a music life is a musical dancer his heart is in there's laws music is everything how do you feel about that how do you feel that the music that you sing it touches people how do you feel that it helps them like me when i'm depressed angry to a point where i'm just ready to take yes the sexy voice he has yes yes well he's working on the opening we doing the opening to the show not i but i forgot this is our anniversary stadiums stadiums have you done the national anthem yes i didn't want to give them want to give them like didn't want to give him that he didn't want to get back i was at the garden very well here and i did the national anthem and it was just like was the game like now it should be using the national quite happy birthday so it was a wonderful experience you know what i remember most from that night was there was a citizen that just you have to open yourself up to all of the janitors because you never know what's going to lead you where exactly you know back so you could be one of the girls told me when my last case she was on one hundred thousand a pyramid because she met somebody somewhere made a good impression they sent her an e mail and said we have this thing for you know one hundred thousand out here are really ok you never know and i'm glad a letter some of the movie with some of the people you never know give me two to three chips that an independen singer can do to keep their career flow because you know being out here independent is really hard trying to get on a label is hard but how do you independent a song the first thing is you have to love it has to be your passion and the second thing it's against surround yourself with people that believe in you believe in your dream and stay focused stay focused stay on that grind don't give up i don't care what anyone say i don't care how many nose you get you're going to get that yes you're going to get it so just stay