4idols Mya Harrison

Birth name: Mya Marie Harrison
Height: 5' 6½" (1.69 m)
Born: 10/10/1979
Birthplace: Washington, D.C.

Mya was born to an american-Italian mother Theresa Harrison, and a Jamaican father, Sherman Harrison. She attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland

In 1997, Mýa signed a recording contract with Haqq Islam's University Records, after being brought to the label by her friends in the R&B group Dru Hill. The four members of the group, Tamir "Nokio" Ruffin, Mark "Sisqó" Andrews, Larry "Jazz" Anthony', and James "Woody" Green, wrote and produced half of Mýa's eponymous debut album. The first two singles, "It's All About Me" and "Movin' On," were co-written by Sisqó; the former song also featured Sisqó on guest vocals, while the latter featured rapper Silkk Tha Shocker. The third single, the love ballad "My First Night With You", was written by Diane Warren. Although the singles all had substantial airplay on urban and rhythmic radio, they all also failed to cross over onto pop radio. Nevertheless, the videos for all three songs were MTV staples through 1998.

Besides her own work, Mýa was a featured artist (she sang the chorus), with Ol' Dirty Bastard, on Pras' smash summer 1998 hit, "Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)", from the Bulworth soundtrack. During the fall of the same year, she also scored a pop hit as a featured vocalist on BLACKstreet's "Take Me There" from the The Rugrats Movie soundtrack, which also featured guest raps from Ma$e and Blinky Blink.

In 2000, Mýa returned to the music scene with her second album, Fear Of Flying. Its first single, "Best Of Me," was an urban R&B song that featured rapper Jadakiss and had an even more urban hip-hop remix, which featured Jay-Z. Once again, the song and its remix were huge on urban radio, but did not have any pop success. Mýa's first big pop hit came with the second Fear Of Flying single, "Case Of The Ex". The song's video was also huge on MTV's TRL. Following the success of "Case Of The Ex," Interscope re-released Fear Of Flying with a revised track order and two additional songs, including Mýa's third single, "Free." "Free" was even more pop-friendly and also became quite successful on MTV, TRL, and pop radio.

In spring of 2001, Mýa joined forces with Lil Kim, Pink, and Christina Aguilera, on a remake of Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade". The track was produced by hip-hop producers Missy Elliott and Rockwilder and was featured in Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge. The song's success was driven by its sexually suggestive video, which featured the four singers dressed in burlesque. Pink and Mýa later described that the immodest concept almost prevented the video from being filmed (Mýa appeared with a whipping switch in the video's opening scene); nonetheless, the video was a huge hit on MTV, VH1, and MTV2, and collected several MTV Video Music Awards in 2001. The song was also one of the year's biggest at pop, rhythmic, and even adult top 40--an unlikely supporter of any song at all urban-leaning--radio stations, receiving a dizzying 120+ plays per week at some American radio stations during the peak of its success. Though all four performers have had at least one subsequent mainstream hit, none of them has since achieved the same magnitude of chart success as they did with "Lady Marmalade".

Around the same time, Mýa also began to dabble in acting. She had a supporting role in the 2002 musical film, Chicago, and most recently in 2005's Cursed. In 2003, Mýa and Common were featured as performers in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign called "Real Compared To What,"

In the summer of 2003, Mýa released the video for "My Love Is Like... Wo", the lead single from her third album, Moodring. The song was arguably Mýa's poppiest solo song yet, which necessitated a more urban remix. Despite lackluster support from the hip-hop crowd, the song managed to become a top 20 hit in the U.S. due to its mainstream pop success. Moodring debuted at #3 in the United States, selling 113,000 copies in its first week. It is current a Gold record, with 683,000 sales to date.

Mýa is recently finishing her fourth album Control Freak, that's scheduled for a summer 2006 release and involves producers like Dr Dre, Lil Jon, Scott Storch and Kwame.

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