Gerald Olivari and DJ Cisco recently spoke with Priscilla Renea about her background, her upcoming album Jukebox, and her other interests outside of music. Priscilla also opens up about her brother who is deceased.
What inspired you to start singing?
Priscilla Renea : I've been singing since I was a child. My mom was in a band. She was a lead singer. My dad played the trumpet and he also sang. It's pretty much in my blood. All throughout school and college, I was choir and musical theatre.
What inspired you to begin pushing your material through YouTube?
Priscilla Renea : I kinda just did it on a whim. The first video that I ever posted was from Justin Timberlake's My Grammy Moment competition back in 2007. I didn't win so I took the video and put it on YouTube. It got a couple of hits so I thought that was something I should keep doing.
The second video that I posted was "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls which had just come out that December. When people went to look for Jennifer Hudson's version, they found mine. That got me hundreds of thousands of hits so I started to see the pattern. If I'm one of the first people to post a song that's fairly new and people look for it, they'll find my version.
I used that technique for a while. It took about a year for my popularity to grow and get a buzz. Being on YouTube is as much work as it is being signed. I was doing crazy stuff like acting like I was my own manger. I was sending emails and pretending to be anonymous. There's a lot of hard work that goes into being on YouTube. You can't just put videos up and think you'll get signed and live a fairytale life. It's not that way at all.
So during that time when you were doing the managing, the marketing, and singing, it was just you doing it all by yourself?
Priscilla Renea : Me by myself for the first year and a half. I was all me. I was finding ways to make money off the Internet. Selling my songs. Entering Competitions. Using my fans to win me money. I was just doing it all. My parents, my mom more specifically, was telling me that I need to get off of the Internet and go to school. I wanted to prove that I could make money from it so I was working overtime.
Let's talk about your debut album. What should people expect from Jukebox?
Priscilla Renea : I think they should expect to get to know me and feel like they've heard the story of my life. Every last song has a piece of me in it. There are only 2 or 3 songs that were co-written. The rest of them were done by me.
Fans should expect to hear my personality. I want them to feel like I'm sitting right next to them singing a song directly to them when they listen to it. That's what they will get...from ages 5 to 55.
What's the best way for your fans to reach you?
Priscilla Renea : I run every last one of my sites. I do twitter A LOT so if you really want to get me right now...Twitter! (Priscilla Renea's Twitter)
What other interests do you have outside of music?
Priscilla Renea : I have a soft spot for children. I used to work in a foster home. I just went to CHOC (Children's Hospital of Orange County). I just wanted to stay there. Those children are sooooo adorable. It just hurts your heart to see them suffering like that. My brother was terminally ill so my heart goes out to anybody who has to deal with anything like that because I definitely know it feels.
If you don't mind talking about it, what was the condition with your brother who's deceased?
Priscilla Renea : He had MELAS (Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Strokes). Your Mitochondrial is the powerhouse for the body. It burns and stores energy. He had so much Mitochondrial in his 24 years that he had enough energy to power a 50 year old. He had twice the normal energy for a person and it ate him up and burned him out. He's in a better place now.
Listen to the Entire Interview!
Priscilla Renea talks about WHY she decided to go with Capitol Records and the transition to working with a major label. She also spoke about her project with Baby Phat.
Gerald Olivari and DJ Cisco recently spoke with 
