Takiyah Spears
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Takiyah Spears

| INDIE

| INDIE
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Debut Single "Divorce" iTunes

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Bio

Takiyah Spears. Her inspirations are diverse as Aretha Franklin, Beyonce Knowles and Janis Joplin compared, but the one thing those artists do have in common is the motivating force that exists in Spears. She wants her music timeless like Aretha, multitalented like Beyonce, and soulful like Janis. Growing up in Chicago, Spears experienced a very diverse culture of people at an early age, so it was only natural that her inspirations would derive from each corner of the music spectrum.

"I love all kinds of music, classical, rock, country, if it sounds good I like it," Spears says. "But, oh Beyonce. She is the epitome of everything I want to be. I want to be just like her. I love her music, everything about her. She´s multitalented. There is nothing that she cannot do if she puts her mind to it and I feel like I want to walk in her footsteps. That´s the path I want my career to go down."

Starting with her great-grandmother´s days of signing the blues, expanding to her mother´s deep rooted religious beliefs; Spears found herself singing in her church´s angelic gospel choir at the age of four.

"Actually I didn´t have a choice, my mom kept us in the choir," Spears said. "But throughout my childhood we went to a magnet school for dance, drama and art, so at a young age I found out I could sing."

Like every artist Spears´ inspiration doesn´t just come from the admiration of idols, it stems from emotion. Whether those feeling be of joy, pain, or heartache her main inspiration to sing and perform stems from a rough growing up and life changing moments that made her the woman that she is today. Music became an outlet, a way to express the emotions she would instinctively hold in.

There have been three pivotal moments in Spears´ life that have brought her to the point in her life she is in now. In a time when the average person would have broken down and given up, she persevered and overcame tremendous obstacles just to find an outlet for her expressions. At age fourteen Takiyah was raped by a family member, her mom couldn´t understand her lashing out and she had no one to turn to. Then not to long after that, the only way she knew how to suppress what she felt was to get into gang banging and theft. Then finally, less than a year after the raping and her downward spiral into street life, her rock bottom came when she was arrested at the age of 15 and went to prison for aggravated robbery.

"I think about what I´ve been through. I have been to prison for twelve years of my life," Spears said. "I couldn´t talk to anybody, so I had music. Shirley Murdock was a big, big inspiration for me back then. Growing up as a teenager, I had music and that´s how I expressed myself."

It had taken those three life altering experiences to open her eyes and see what her true calling to happiness really was and in actuality the only real therapy that would be able to ease her past.

"I held all that hurt in because I didn´t know how to talk to people at the time without getting defensive or wanting to lash out. Now I know it´s not my fault. It wasn´t my fault for what happened to me as a kid."

After moving to Houston from Chicago in 1990, and serving time in prison, you would have thought that music left her mind. But instead, the most influential person in her life, her grandmother, would always say two simple words, "baby pray". "My grandmother has been my rock," Spears said. She kept her mind and heart focused on her passion for singing. Even through terminal cancer her grandmother would come and visit Spears in prison all the way from Illinois up until the time she passed away.

"She would always say believe in you, God believes in you. And I held onto that, I held onto her singing and just remembered all the love she gave to me. She was like an angel."

Alongside her grandmother, education was another outlet that got her through.

"The most significant thing I got of my experience in prison was my education," Spears said. "I swear if I could change anything, I wouldn´t change a thing because it made me the person that I am. I know I had to go through it to make me the person I am today."

"People look at prison and say oh it so bad, but to be honest, prison is what you make out of it. I got my education and I learned so much. It´s a part of life and some people might not understand when I say that it´s a part of my life and I wish I could go back, not as a prisoner but as person going back to help the women still there. It´s a huge part of my life and it´s very close and dear to me. But most of all, it forced me to grow up."

Spears always knew the moment she stepped back into society that she would be somebody big, somebody great. She would have dreams while lying in her cell at night about singing on stage in front of fans, accepting awards. And she knew it was her destiny to through these experiences in her life to shape and build the character she has today.

Since then Spears