She MIGHT not have the mainstream success of say, Beyonce, but when it comes to collaboration, nutrition and being a diva, Syleena Johnson (pictured) is your woman.
The fourth annual Women Of Note Celebration concert, taking place in Bloemfontein tonight, will host the US R&B singer, as well as South African greats like Thandiswa Mazwai and Lira. Johnson will showcase some covers and songs from her latest album, Chapter 6: Couples Therapy.
Ten years since she was last in Mzansi, the I’m Your Woman singer reminisced on collaborating with Kelly Khumalo. For Khumalo’s fourth album, Simply Kelly, the pair recorded a song called Power Of Love. Johnson recorded her parts while she joined her husband who was playing basketball in Italy. “Kelly Khumalo is a great artist and I love her voice,” Johnson squeezes her hands together and grins. “She’s this itty bitty thing with that powerful voice.”
Another worthwhile experience for Johnson was going back to college after 21 years. She graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nutrition science. “I’ve been an athlete all my life,” she explains, “and I went to this dietician who changed my whole perspective and taught me about allergies and how they affect the body. And then my son was struggling with allergies and I couldn’t figure out what was happening so I was doing research and thought, ‘I might as well just get my degree’. It was (previously) all these music majors, as you can imagine. But I was so passionate and wanting to learn about nutrition so it was easy to want to do it.”
Nutrition and image are themes that come up often during our conversation. It makes sense then that when I quiz her about whether she’ll be penning a book based on her albums – which all carry the prefix “Chapter” – she says she has something else in mind.
“I was going to do my life story but before that, there’s a book I’m actually finishing up,” she says of the book that’s meant to be published next year. “It’s called The Weight is Over and talks about my journey as an African-American woman in the music business and how body dysmorphia is so prevalent and how it teaches you to un-love yourself, basically.
“It’s the journey of me coming into the industry thinking I was one way: good times. And then finding out: ‘oh no, they hate us. We’re African-American, our butts are too big. Our breasts are too big’. So then you spend all this time trying to be skinny and then all of a sudden, our butts are good again, our lips are good again. So now you’re like: ‘I need a booty!’” She laughs out loud at this.
Johnson laughs a lot and is easy to amuse. Like when we joke about her “being booked” which is a nod to a catchphrase made famous by Kelly Price on the R&B Divas: Los Angeles TV show. Johnson appeared alongside the likes of Monifah and Keke Wyatt on the Atlanta version of the franchise.
Johnson and her husband recently participated on the Marriage Bootcamp reality show (a different season is airing on Lifetime, DStv channel 131). “It was more than I could bargain for and I would never do it again,” she laughs.
Johnson is very open about life on television and it’s easy to see why. As she explains: “Obviously, I’m not the type of artist who gets a lot of television exposure and I perform all over the world, but that doesn’t get shown on TV. But,” she gets serious, “R&B Divas gave me a chance to connect with my fans so now they love me on my good and bad days because who I am in my music is who I am in real life.”
l Catch the Women Of Note Celebration concert at the Vista Arena, Bloemfontein tomorrow. Book at Computicket.