BV Q&A: Allure
By Quibian Salazar-Moreno, Special to AOL BlackVoices
If you’ve been keeping your eye on the sports world lately, you’re probably familiar with Allure. No, they’re not former WNBA stars or pro tennis players, they’re the group that Ron Artest has been hawking for the past month and a half on television and radio. While most clueless broadcasters and journalists kept referring to the infamous Nov. 23 date as the release date for Artest’s debut rap album, it’s actually the release date for Allure’s album – the first release from the Artest-owned TruWarier Records.
The trio of Akissa, Lalisha and Alia signed with TruWarier last year after their 2001 sophomore album, ‘Sunny Days,’ failed to register on the R&B radar. In fact, the group has been missing in action since ‘All Cried Out,’ the most successful single from their eponymous 1997 debut. But the ladies of Allure are hoping that the third time is the charm with their appropriately titled ‘Chapter III.’
BV caught up with Allure and talked about the new album, Artest’s drama and the crush that one of the members has on an R&B superstar.
It seemed like Allure was going places when ‘All Cried Out’ hit, but after ‘Sunny Days’ the momentum just stopped. What have you all been up to?
Lalisha: Thank God for the success of ‘All Cried Out,’ we were able to travel the states. As soon as it started dying down in the states, we went over to Australia to tour, to the Philippines. We just went overseas and got the overseas money. Thank God we were okay.
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from Allure. What’s the biggest difference we’ll notice on ‘Chapter III’?
Akissa: We feel that the biggest difference with this album is that we pretty much did a lot of writing, which we didn’t get to do too much of on the first album. We did some writing on ‘Sunny Days,’ but on this album we did about 85 percent of it. We also consider this our first album because of the fact that nobody knew too much about the second album. I’m actually surprised that you mentioned it, and just because we have so much creative control this time. We’ve had so many personal experiences that we’ve been through the past couple of years and people really haven’t heard too much from us and we feel like this is the one that people are just going to, like, get.
Destiny’s Child is almost the lone survivor of what was once a crowded landscape of girl groups. Where does Allure fit into the picture today?
Lalisha: Well, there’s room for everybody. Even when there was Xscape, Total, Blaque, 702 -- everyone was eating. So now that there’s just the two of us now, we know there’s a lot of room and there’s a lot of space so we plan just to have our mark in music history.
Allure was a quartet, but now it is a trio. What happened to the fourth member?
Alia: She wanted to go solo, she wanted to do her own thing and we really wanted to keep the group thing going, the Allure name, so we decided to do this album.
How did you guys hook up with Ron Artest and TruWarier Records?
Akissa: We had a mutual friend that we were working with about a year ago, and during the time we weren’t signed, he came to us and said, ‘Ron Artest from the Indiana Pacers wants to sign a group to his label.’ He mentioned us and Ron was excited because he was also a fan when we first came out. So our friend set up the meeting for us to meet Ron and we spoke about our project and how we were already six months into it and stuff. Ron was pretty much interested, he was a fan from back then, he loved us and he was really pleased with the new stuff that he heard. So from then on, that’s how it came about for us being signed and he asked us to sign with his label.
What do you think about the whole situation that happened at the Pistons-Pacers game?
Lalisha: We support him, definitely. We’re going to stand behind him 1000 percent because he’s been behind our project. A lot of people don’t know that he has a big heart and he doesn’t deserve that punishment. We don’t believe the punishment fits what happened in the situation but we’re definitely supporting him regardless.
Akissa: We just feel that it’s just really unfortunate that the whole thing went about the way that it did, but at the same time we know that people like to always kind of come at Ron because of his past or whatever, but like Lalisha said, he has a big heart. He’s such a sweetheart and people don’t know how much of a good person he is. I think they just want to focus on his negatives, [so much so] that they don’t see his positives. They don’t see that he gives back to his community. He does stuff for kids and he goes back to his own projects in Queens and he looks out for people there. And the fact that he even gave us another opportunity to come back out and actually record another album, that’s reason enough for us to believe in him and stick by him and support him because he believed in us when nobody else did. We just want to let him know that we love him after all that.
Ron’s everywhere right now, but when will people be able to see Allure?
Akissa: We just started our promotional tour, just hitting a couple of cities in the nearby states. We recently came back from Korea from performing for the troops who were going back to Iraq for the second time. So we’ve been just you know, basically trying to promote the album and let everybody listen to what we’ve done so far and hopefully right now, we’ll be in the works of getting on bigger tours. I’m sure Alia would love for us to be on tour with Usher.
Does Alia have a crush on Usher?
Lalisha: Yes, she does!
Usher’s been pegged as one of the few shining lights in an industry in decline. What’s Allure’s diagnosis of the music industry’s current condition?
Alia: It’s definitely getting worse; it’s not getting any better. We thought that there was a time where it was coming back to talent, and it seems like it just keeps going back to where it doesn’t take much talent. It’s like, if they think you’re cute or if they feel you have a market, they just go with [you]. They’re not into raw talent. So we’re just trying to bring that back, real music, real singing, real shows, and things like that. We think it made a turn for the worse but we’re going to stick with it regardless and do what we do.
Nov. 29, 2004