IT’S MILADAH’S TIME
“How my heart yearns, how my heart aches,” croons Miladah on a selection from her new CD. “Patience and silence as I wait and wait…” While love songs and their singers have come and gone over the decades, such music has never been more utterly believable than through the remarkable voice of this rising R&B star out of New York.
“When I sing a song, it’s organic,” says Miladah (pronounced Mee-lah-dah), a name that, not surprisingly, means “my love.” “I want people to know me on a personal, deeper level. What you’re getting is pure heart and soul. I have passion, and I’ve used many difference colors of emotions. It’s not just straight line – it’s up and down and around, all over the place.”
Indeed, the voice will alternately growl and purr, soothe and stir, reflecting influences that range from Billie Holiday and Chaka Khan to Roberta Flack, Whitney Houston and Al Green. In the end, though, it’s all Miladah, and it’s been a long time coming.
Miladah grew up in Yonkers, New York, on Warburton Avenue (home of Jadakiss and Mary J. Blige), living in a two-bedroom apartment with her single mother, two brothers and sister.
“I want to let people know that I had to work for everything I achieved,” she says. “The shoes that I wear, the car that I drive.”
A fledgling ballerina, she attended Performing Arts Emerson Junior High School, where a vocal teacher spotted her. A place in the choir followed, and, at Lincoln High School for the Performing Arts, she landed the leading role in “The King And I.”
After graduating full of dreams, she moved to New York City, but found that the road to success wasn’t easy. She survived by working long hours at a pizzeria, and became a licensed massage therapist, later co-founding The Village Day Spa in Bronxville. Five years later, as the business blossomed into a huge success, Miladah knew that it was time to pursue her real passion – music.
That decision was spurred on by one of her co-workers, she recalls.
“She heard me singing at the spa and said, ‘You have a very beautiful tone to your voice.’” This was heady praise, since the woman’s husband was the legendary Bill Withers.
And that, Miladah says, was “a turning point.
“If I don’t do this,” she decided, “I’ll lose the sense of myself.”
Literally up the street from Miladah’s business was a recording studio called “The Loft” (Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson,etc,). There, she found herself with multi-platinum producer/engineer Matt Noble (Diana King, “Jason’s Lyric,” Expose). Enlisting the additional talents of producer/writer “Buttaz”(Leela James, Trey Songz) and renowned mixmaster/engineer Al Hemberger (Brittany, Jessica Simpson, Shontelle, Rihanna), Miladah set about recording her songs and experiences.
So now here’s the CD, “Ain’t Nothing Wrong,” sixteen lustrous, soulful tracks, including the aforementioned “Do You Know (What Love Is)?”
“When people hear that song, they cry. They get the chills. They feel it. I didn’t realize how powerful that song was until people responded.”
So does the CD release signal riches and fame for Miladah?
“I’d like to be famous,” she says shyly. “But I feel that I’m already rich, because I get to do this music.”
