There is something about youth, flawless in its idealism. There is something about raw talent, pure in its very essence. There is also something about three voices, powerfull, determined, emotive voices, that can variously meld as one mellifluous sonic thunderstorm or break out in stunneing solo salvos. There is something about this combination that is simply Divine...
Three years ago, Tonia, Kia and Nikki were brought together by managers Nathan Garvin and Gillian Manigat. Seperately their voices are magic. United, their voices are Divine.
While the young trio are today inextriably bound by friendship, respect and musical kinship, Devine once was three individual girls with their saperate lives in three different towns who could not have known that they would become one. One group with one communal voice and one shared vision. While Tonia was running around the house in Brooklyn, N.Y. singing into hair brushes and rehearsing in front of a mirror, Nikki, who hailes from Newark, N.J. was actually in a studio laying down vocals. Kia got her start in Inglewood, N.J. as the lead of the church choir when she was only nine. About the album "FAIRY TALES": Devine's musically broad yet stylistically cohesive debut album, is full of more.
More globally appealing southern tinged R&B, peppered with red hot funk ("Fairy Tales," "Good And Plenty," "I Never Thought," featuring Lady Mecca, formerly of Digible Planets); '90s pop sensibilities ("I Wish," "It's About Time"); stripped down acoustic simplicity ("Sweet Essence"); and heart-felt soul ("Lately," the trademark track brought to the girls by executive producer Ruben Rodriguez, "One More Try," George Michael's achingly beautiful classic). While the lyrics throughout the record reflect the life experiences and perceptions dictated by their age, the girls impart a musical sophistication far beyond their tender teenage years while the subject matter, the group insists, crosses generational and gender barriers.
"Even if a listener is older, " Kia decrees, "he or she can still get into our music." For instance, "Missing You," she explains, "is about a girl whose boyfriend broke up with her and now wants to get back with her. But he already hurt her feelings so she feels, "I'm not missing you at all. You missed out on a good thing." Empowerment. Self respect. Moving on. Life as we all know it.
"The recording process was a lot different from what we expected," notes Kia. "we definitely graduated from singing along with our radio's in our bedrooms." The radios were replaced by live instrumentation, with a strong emphasis on the hammond.
Their first single "Lately" from the album "Fairy Tales" was a smashing number one hit in the U.S.A.!!!
Source: http://www.arcade.nl/artiesten/renb/divine/bio2.html
