SOULCRAVERS RADIO WITH SPECIAL GUEST SINGER/SONGWRITER TAWATHA AGEE

Tawatha Agee was born in Pittsburgh –not in Philadelphia, as many sources claim. “I’m from Pittsburgh but I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, surrounded by music,” she says. “I sang in my choir and played piano at the local church.” She later attended Arts High School in Newark and then Howard University, where she majored in music education. During her senior year at Howard, Tawatha met the noted producer and musician James Mtume and his partner Reggie Lucas. “They had just come off the road with Miles Davis and Roberta Flack and were looking for a group to produce,” she remembers. Tawatha was a part of that original group, which also included folks like Angela Winbush and gospel artist Richard Smallwood. An audition for CBS Records didn’t work out, but she and James Mtume stayed in touch and then he put the Mtume Band together.

Mtume enjoyed a smash hit with the title track of their 1983 album “Juicy Fruit”, which featured Tawatha’s sultry lead vocals and occupied the #1 spot on the Billboard R&B charts for an incredible eight weeks. All these years later, “Juicy Fruit” still turns up on compilations and urban radio and is one of the most sampled songs in all of Hip Hop – most notably Biggie Smalls mega hit “Juicy”.

Mtume’s next album, 1984’s “You, Me, and He”, also produced a hit with its title track. The song “You, Me, and He” reached #2 on the R&B chart. In 1986, Tawatha recorded her first solo album, “Welcome to My Dream”.