By Richard Burnett for Curtains Up! @bugsburnett
One of the first things out of my mouth when I first spoke with soul singer Divine Brown when her 2005 hit single Old Skool Love topped the charts was, “Damn if there are two famous black women called Divine Brown.”
The other, of course, happens to be the West Hollywood hooker who was giving actor Hugh Grant a blowjob in a rented BMW when they were both arrested by the LAPD. That Divine Brown then played herself in the 1996 adult video/docudrama Sunset & Divine (a.k.a. Taken for Granted) directed by Ron Jeremy.
You can imagine what Divine Brown the Juno Award-winning singer – who actually changed her name from Divine Earth Essence – has to put up with.
“Changing my name was just something I had to do,” Brown said with considerable understatement. “But after I changed my name this [hooker story] kept coming up in interviews and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ But now it makes for a great anecdote.”
Brown can wail away like her idol Aretha Franklin. But Chaka Khan’s influence is all over Divine’s vocals.
“Chaka’s got fire in her voice. Growing up I wanted so badly to have a voice that sounded like that. I had the belting range, the upper register, the falsetto,” says the Toronto native, who boasts a five-octave singing voice. “But connecting all of them – I’d crank Chaka Khan really loud and practise how she held her notes and shouted.”
It all came together the day Brown heard Old Skool Love on her car radio for the first time.
“I was at a Tim Horton’s drive-thru getting my morning coffee on the way to rehearsals for Ain’t Misbehavin’ when my song came on. So I turned it right up, rolled down the window and screamed, ‘That’s my song! That’s me on the radio!’ Now can I have a medium coffee double double?’ That was the best coffee I ever had.”
Divine Brown and her band headline Le Piano Rouge (22 Rue St-Paul E.) in Old Montreal on June 13-14.
Click here for the official Facebook event page, here for Divine Brown’s official website, and here for Le Piano Rouge’s official website.
Photo courtesy Divine Brown
