The success of I'm Still In Love With You only signals her return to a field she once led

She was a wild teen who somehow found her way into the church. But Sasha was unable to resist the lure of stardom and, as the hem of her dress started rising again, it was evident she was on her way back to the dancehalls.
Now there is obviously no stopping her.

Her latest single, I'm Still In Love With You, with Sean Paul, zoomed into the Billboard Hot 100 Chart last week; her label, VP, wants a new album by March; and her mom has finally accepted the fact that her daughter's future is in secular music.

Sasha came home this Christmas for a working holiday which has turned out to be some sort of a nightmare: She nearly lost her life fleeing bottles and gunshots at Sting on Boxing Night; a couple days later she was held up in broad daylight at an uptown shopping plaza and robbed of her jewellery and her cell phone.

"I even fell down the stairs at my relatives home," she joked. But she is still determined that, by the time she goes back to the United States, her new album will have been completed and she will be ready for 2004.

SASHA.I am here to prove that you can come to Jamaica from foreign and done the place same way (Photos: Joseph Wellington)

Most people hearing Sasha performing with Sean Paul on the new single, consider her prime female material for 2004. But, in fact, she has been there before, and seen it all and done it all.

The success of I'm Still In Love With You only signals her return to a field she once led.

Born Karen Chin in East Kingston, she left for the United States to join her mother in New Haven, Connecticut several years ago. Her mother, Omega Petria, who is now living in North Carolina, was a regular churchgoer, and her grandfather Nathan Richards, who now heads a church in North Carolina, was a pastor in New Haven.

So Sasha's love for music started out expressing itself in church choirs, though she really liked rap, especially the sound of the female duo, Salt 'N Pepa.

"I used to idolise them: watch them, tried to do their stuff and then I started rapping on talent shows. She went on, "I used to go to dance theatres, I used to dance. I was always involved in talent shows." But it wasn't until she was about 15 that she started liking Jamaican Reggae/dancehall music, especially Shabba Ranks.

"One day I wanted to go to this Shabba Ranks concert at the Parkside Plaza in the Bronx (New York), but I was the only girl for my mother and she was very strict on me... I did everything, cleaned the house, washed the plates, everything, but my mother insisted. So I teamed up with a cousin to sneak out of the house. We dressed up like adults, in wigs and things, and sneaked through a window."

At the entrance to the venue, despite their disguise, the security guard somehow saw through them and guessed right that they were under 18, but he let them in anyway. She ended up on stage with Shabba Ranks after he asked for females to dance with him.

"He gave me the mike and I mash up di place, bad, bad, bad," she said.

One of Shabba Ranks' managers, Delroy 'Jamazima' Phillips, gave her a business card, and that started a professional relationship, which was to guide her through the years.

She made some demo tapes for Phillips who took them to Jamaica and played them for producers Steelie (Wycliffe Johnson) and Clevie (Cleveland Browne).

When Steelie came to New York to discuss the possibility of her recording for them in Kingston, she had to sneak out of the house one night in freezing rain to discuss the project with him at a restaurant in Queens.

"He wanted to take me to Jamaica to record and I gave him the impression that I was an adult and I could make that decision on my own, but I was really only 15," she confessed.

So she drafted a plan while school was on winter break. She told her mom that she wanted to visit her cousin in Queens. What she really did was to pick up a plane ticket from Steelie at the travel agency and flew straight to Kingston, where she recorded a dancehall flavoured, hardcore rap single titled, Kill The Bitch.

She wasn't too proud of the song, as she felt the producers had concentrated too much on the sensual slurs she used to flavour the music, which gave it an overtly sexually hardcore sound.

In the meantime, Sasha's mom heard the full story about how she had actually flown to Kingston to record a hardcore song, after giving her the impression that she was only going to Queens to see her cousin.

"She beat me badly. I got some licks! Then she threw me out after she heard the song. The song sounded so explicit, she was furious. It had a very strong sexual content," Sasha admitted.

But the song became a favourite of nightclub deejays and was even picked up by Chris Blackwell's Island/Mango label as the flipside of Buju Banton's Bogle.

"I didn't like it, I hated that song. I was saying how could I do a song like that. But, it did a hell of a lot for me," she confirmed. "Even in Africa it did well. The result was phenomenal. The club DJs liked it so much it became a club anthem."

She started touring all over the world, with Christopher 'Campus' Campbell as her manager. At the time, she was still attending high school in Queens, and everyone recognised her as the teenaged, high school rap/dancehall queen.

"Everyone at school wanted to be my friend. Everybody knew me. I was the most popular chick at school; I could tell other students do this, do that. I had everything, name brand shoes, clothes, and jewellery. Everybody thought I was a rich girl. It was a lot of hype for me."
Then she grew up.

"Yes, I just grew up. I stopped singing Reggae and I went to church," she said.

Phillips, a Rastafarian, was very disappointed that she might not achieve all she could from her talent. "But, my family felt that God gave me the talent to sing his praises and, instead, I was singing evil. I started going to a church in Queens. Delroy (Phillips) stood by me, however, and he was confident that I would start singing pop music again."

Two years later, Sasha was back to singing Reggae music.
"I went back to Jamaica and I fell in love, at least I thought I did. I was still associated with the church and I used to wear long skirts and they just started getting shorter and shorter and, eventually, I moved back to Jamaica for about a year to be with him." But the relationship broke up.

She met producer Tony Kelly in New York and recorded That Sexy Body for him on his Bookshelf rhythm, a song that just recently moved into the mainstream charts courtesy of VP.
"For many years VP had a eye on me," she confessed. But, it was particularly VP's A&R (Artiste & Repertoire) manager, Murray Elias who had grown ears for her since he heard Kill The Bitch. So when he became Sean Paul's A&R manager he selected I'm Still In Love With You for the eventual platinum album, Dutty Rock.

The history of the song itself, and even its future has become a controversy in local music circles.

First recorded by singer Alton Ellis for Studio One's Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd over 30 years ago, it was later covered by Marcia Aitken, produced by Joe Gibbs. But, a few years ago, when Steely and Clevie decided to do a cover of it on an album they titled Old To The New (Tribute to Joe Gibbs), made up of hit songs produced by Gibbs, they decided to team Sasha and Sean Paul to cover the track.

The song was largely ignored after the album's release, until it was pulled from that CD and added to Paul's Dutty Rock. It is now the latest single from Paul's hugely successful album and entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart last week at number 82.

There was some doubt at the beginning, within the camp as to whether a song with a "one drop" flavour could follow up Paul's successes in the urban media.

"But, what happened was that, as soon as the song was released, everybody went crazy over it. Everybody loved it. Oh my God, they just embraced it," Sasha said.

She has been in Jamaica for the past few weeks on a working vacation, during which she has been recording a number of possibilities for the new VP album featuring productions by Bobby Digital, Firehouse Crew and Triton from Black Shadows (Gimme Di Light), which should be out by March.

This would be her second album, after Come Again, which she did for Gussie Clarke's Anchor Records about five years ago.

But, is she determined to retain that hardcore crown she wore years ago with Kill the Bitch?

"When I say hardcore, you will never hear Sasha on a stage saying certain things. I write suggestive lyrics. I don't say things, I just suggest it. When I say hardcore, I don't mean the raw chaw, I don't even curse, if I curse I make them up, like raam scraam. I make up my own things. I don't know if it is that I've matured over the years - but I am not that kind of artiste. I could say my kitty kat and get away with it and get the same response.

"I am here to prove that you can come to Jamaica from foreign and done the place same way, because music is music and if you're good and confident, and you go out there, you can make it same way. Even if I am not living in Jamaica, I can do just as well as anybody coming out of Jamaica."

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