Lalah has been enjoying the ride of finding her own sound and style.
“Honestly, I’m not portraying anyone other than myself. Anyone who’s ever seen me perform live or met me knows that what you see is what you get. I’m a private person and guarded,” she says.
The late great Donny Hathaway holds the family’s baby girl Kenya (a background singer on American Idol) while mom Eulaulah and little Lalah stand nearby.
“This is the most important treasure in my home,” says Lalah.
“What can I say?”: Lalah spends time backstage at the 2008 Trumpet Awards with Johnta Austin, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Usher, Danny Glover and Keith Sweat.
“Every day I turn to MTV and I hear them playing the piano on the bumper. If you think about it, [my dad] is like Tupac,” she says.
Lalah invokes her inner Foxy Brown at Teena Marie’s birthday bash at a Los Angeles roller rink, in March.
“We had so much fun!” she says.
“Freeze Frame”: Lalah and her friends keep it funky and retro at Teena Marie’s birthday party.
“Aren’t We Lovely?”: Lalah, Stevie Wonder and his daughter Aisha Morris enjoy a Rahsaan Patterson show.
Zoom in and check out Lalah’s self-portrait.
“What’s crazy is that I’m just realizing that I may just be on the precipice of what I can do. All my life I’ve been a musician and if I’m good at anything else I really don’t have time to find out because I’ve been doing music constantly. As I was working on this record, it dawned on me that perhaps I could be a better musician or a better singer,” she says. “Maybe there’s stuff that I haven’t even discovered that I can do yet.”
Lalah and her mom Eulaulah are all smiles.
“Say what?”: Lalah up close and personal.
“There’s so much music in the world that you could search it your entire life and still never find it all. That’s exciting to me,” Lalah says.
Lalah smiles bright with one of her best friends and music collaborators Rahsaan Patterson.
“If you get my record, you know that you’re going to get a quality product. So if you buy it and you don’t listen to it for six years that it’s still going to be good and relevant,” Lalah says. “Knowing that my music was a blessing to someone’s life is what’s really important.”
