Yvette Nicole Brown (‘The Masked Singer’ Showbird): The music industry ‘didn’t love me back’ [WATCH]
Season 12 of “The Masked Singer” continued Wednesday night on FOX, with four Group A contestants belting out classic hits from “Footloose.” Following the studio audience vote, Showbird became the second singer to unmask this season, revealing Emmy-nominated actress Yvette Nicole Brown. Watch our video interview above.
“I was blessed to be signed to Motown records under Michael Bivins when I was a teenager,” she reveals. “I was a member of the East Coast Family with Boyz II Men. Music was everything to me. My first love, but it didn’t love me back. I shifted when I moved to LA and started going into acting. Then acting took off and music was just something that I loved that I never got to do unless it was as a character. This is the first time I’m getting to sing in my own voice for everybody to hear.”
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Her voice was recognizable enough for panelists Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to guess before she unmasked, but Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg thought she was Taraji P. Henson, while Rita Ora said Sheila E. Brown says her Masked Singer Ambassador, “Community” co-star Joel McHale, may have been too big of a clue. “It kind of told everybody,” she laughs. “Also, the popcorn from ‘Drake and Josh’ was there and the gavel from ‘Black Lady Sketch Show’ was there. If anybody knew anything about my career at all, they probably knew it was me before I even sang one note.”
Brown held nothing back, performing hits from top divas like Mary J. Blige‘s “Just Fine” and Deniece Williams‘ “Let’s Hear It For the Boy.” She admits, “‘Just Fine’ scared the mess out of me because it’s a very fast song and it’s a lot of lyrics. I’m of a certain age now where my brain is bad. I really didn’t know if was going to be able to remember all of those lyrics.” She continues, “Deniece Williams is one of the greatest singers the world has ever seen. She is a soprano and I am not. So, I was really nervous about some of those notes, but I think I did okay. I’m proud of myself.”
When she was younger, Brown says her top musical influences were Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and CeCe Winans. Her favorite album was Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” and she says, “I would have loved the chance to have been able to do backgrounds on that album. That would have been everything.”
She also tells fans that the “Community” movie is in the works. “It’s happening! We’re all coming back and we’re all excited. It has always been a scheduling thing, it’s never been desire. We’re not tricking the fans, we’re not trying to keep everybody hanging. We want to do it, we have to find the time when everybody can do it, and that’s what we’re in the process of figuring out now.”
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