My timing was good because the opportunities were booming for child actors! There were so many child-driven projects back then. Maybe it’s the same now, I’m not sure because I’m no longer a child and don’t hear about those parts anymore, lol. But, in any event, when I first moved to California there were opportunities out the . I was first in line to audition for every last one!

In 2004, I appeared in two very different but equally good movies: Barbershop 2: Back in Business with Queen Latifah and The Wool Cap with William H. Macy. I was nine and ten years old!

Over the next ten years, I was in twenty-one films and sixteen television shows, including the television show True Jackson, VP and my own talk show. My mom gave me some perspective. She reminded me to be grateful for the blessing and overflow, but to also understand that life has ups and downs, and even if the work wasn’t always overflowing, I should always have fun because the work was about creativity and not society’s idea of success.

By the age of ten, I had received a SAG Award nomination in the leading actress category for The Wool Cap. I am still the youngest person to be nominated in the female leading category and it brought me a lot of attention in the acting community. The award is so special among actors because it means your peers thought you deserved the nomination. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, and I think that’s good. But it was a recurring theme in my life. My mom understood, but I didn’t even realize I was achieving all that, because my identity was more wrapped up in music. I was able to be more fearless in my acting because I was less self-conscious about it, but the music—not so much.

However, a very rare opportunity was given to me at the age of twelve. I had just finished Akeelah and the Bee and there was buzz in the industry around my performance. Record producers heard that I recorded a song for the sound track and all of a sudden they wanted to sign me! WHAT? ME? An official actress, and now, A RECORD DEAL! It’s ON!

I was ecstatic! But something went wrong on my way to that dream and things quickly fell apart. The joy I felt singing was overshadowed by people who didn’t always share the same love for my music that I did, and suddenly singing became just a job. The gag is most record labels don’t have artist development. That part of the company lost its way when labels’ main agenda became to sell singles, and when rappers like Master P and Birdman started creating their own independent labels. It made many of the record labels stop investing in real artist development because they depended on smaller production companies to do it and make money off the major singles from the artists. And that means, if you don’t come to major labels with your own infrastructure in place, it is hard for them to know how to deliver you to the world. They are thinking more about selling singles because that brings in the money faster. They aren’t thinking about a long-term career for the artist because that honestly does take a lot of time and effort and is not always a huge “pay off” for THEM, even though it is for the artist. “Single” records don’t help build the careers of great artists the way albums do. That’s why Motown was one of the best record labels in the world—if the artist didn’t hit the first time, they still believed in them and they didn’t stop spending money on development and creating albums where the fans were allowed to grow with them. Today, labels are more like distributors. They don’t want to spend money making artists—they want to get money off artists who are already made or already made a hit. In other words, they don’t want to help the artist create the brand, they just want to attach themselves to the brand once it’s already created. That’s why it is important to know who you are and follow your dreams independent of if you know whether people are going to help you or not. Because if you expect them to do it for you, you will be disappointed every time. Just like I was.

I got my first record deal as a very young artist at the age of twelve, and I didn’t understand all of that. I thought once you had a deal you had it made. I didn’t know how important it was to have a plan for your career going in. I didn’t have my own plan. I got lost in the process, and that’s what I felt like.

My problem in the early days was that I didn’t know who I was as an artist yet. The record company knew I had a great voice and a growing brand as a performer, but they didn’t take the time to consider where I came from, who I was, and who I wanted to be. The record labels were just thinking I could sell some records because I was well-known for being on Disney and Akeelah and the Bee. They knew that my fanbase was diverse and included all kinds of people. They were focused on the money, and not spreading the joy of the feeling that brought me to music in the first place. They didn’t care that I grew up singing in the church or about the community that I was from—basically all the experiences that shaped me and made me ME! Rather than understand me, they seemed frustrated that they couldn’t tap into what made me special. They couldn’t figure out how to make money off that gift, and ultimately it was probably because God didn’t want them to. In a lot of ways, I think God was protecting me in order to protect the message that I now know I am supposed to send. It hurt me, but they couldn’t block the message!

If you look at the successful careers of performers like Alicia Keys, Jennifer Lopez, Aaliyah, Brandy, and even Taylor Swift, you will see that when they started out, you knew their histories, their backgrounds and their stories, which in turn helps you relate to the usually unrelatable lifestyles of artists’ lead. Alicia Keys was the soul singer and classically trained pianist. She was the “diamond in the rough” so well displayed in the “If I Ain’t Got You” video. And even though we saw Jennifer Lopez living large with Diddy and then on her own, her videos always displayed her as a cool down b*tch from the Bronx, with song phrases such as “ ’cause I’m Real.” And even if you couldn’t relate to the “sugary sweet country girl playing the guitar,” a la Taylor Swift, you could relate to her love-struck tendencies and her dragging of her exes, because honestly, everyone likes to speak their truth.

After my first record deal ended, I would watch tons of music videos from my fav artists and listen to their songs and research, wondering where I went wrong. What did they do that I have not? The record company never gave me time to establish my career and tell my story about growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago and moving to the big city of LA. I was so heartbroken by my experience with the industry that I wanted to understand how it went wrong. I would watch videos all day and night and try to see the difference between some that propelled forward and others that didn’t. Their videos gave me inspiration, and it was the first time I realized the integral part that a story line plays for artists—whether it be ambiguous like Prince or straight down the middle like Taylor Swift.

I realized there was always a story. The greats always told you their stories—the ones with legacies gave you a story worth remembering. We were impressed by Michael Jackson’s Thriller because it was a universal record. It had mainstream appeal and a kick-ass video. We were also overtaken by Michael’s image—the glittery gloves and glittery socks. But would it have hit as hard if it wasn’t the Michael Jackson we all knew? Would something so abstract have been understood if we didn’t know Michael’s story? That’s the whole gag. Even though we couldn’t always relate to Michael’s lifestyle, we could always relate to his story.

He came from Indiana, big family, close to his mother and sister, problems with his father. We maybe didn’t always get his quirkiness, but that’s what we would expect, seeing as how he grew up so different in front of our eyes. From the very beginning, he had a different life, making hits since the age of ten for Motown Records. It made sense, he made sense. A song about going to see a horror movie made sense for HIM. And Prince, would we have been able to accept Prince’s ambiguity if he hadn’t so artistically expressed ridicule being a part of his life since he could remember? #PURPLERAIN. As some people ridiculed him about his race, his sexuality, his sense of fashion, other people also shared that story line or just related to his resilience and started to root for him for those same reasons as they realized that his embracing ridicule for being different was a part of his artistic message. (“I just can’t believe all the things people say. Controversy. Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay? Controversy.”) #THATSTHEULTIMATEGAG.

We were invested in these great artists because we got to watch them grow. My previous label ALWAYS tried to take shortcuts with me because I was already a celebrity when I signed—unlike traditional new artists mentioned above. The label didn’t think they had to allow my audience to grow with me as a musician, by giving them the TIME to get to know me as an artist. They thought they could ride the wave of my popularity from acting and make a quick buck, but the gag was I’m not my characters. People aren’t stupid, and they didn’t want a glazed-over Keke Palmer, they wanted to really get to know her if they were going to listen to her music. When my first album was released, the label threw the single out and when it didn’t become widely successful (even though they didn’t promote it effectively or even know me well enough to know how to promote it), they blamed it on me. The single they chose, “Keep It Movin’,” didn’t even represent me or my story well. A better choice would’ve been “Hood Anthem.” They were just thinking about the money and not my fans, not the kids or the people who I wanted to positively affect with my story.

That time was scary for me because I wanted to shine my light, but if it wasn’t big and it wasn’t grand I felt like it wasn’t good enough. They tried to get me to sing music I didn’t give a f*&k about. It was bullshit.

As I said on my website, I did not spread my wings because I was told I couldn’t fly a certain way, and I believed it! I stopped trying altogether because I allowed people to make me believe that being an artist meant having big-budget music videos and big record producers backing you. When in reality, all being an artist means is to be fearless in your creative pursuits. My anxiety, caused by the habit of unconsciously holding my breath, coupled with the stress of my personal life at that time, created a lot of hard years of depression for me. However, I am exalted now because God brings it to you when you are ready, not when you think you are. I am now right where I should be and I can see with my heart that I have always known who I am and who I want to be.

I was young then and I didn’t understand it all. Now I’m a grown woman, and I can say to record executives that they may want a big single, but I want to tell my fans who I am first. I couldn’t articulate that as a kid. No one would listen to me, and I let it steal my joy!

MOVING TO THE NEXT LEVEL

I started to shut down as a result of feeling chained by something that once set me free. What could I do other than to abandon music as a whole? That’s what I thought at the time. Talk about a heartbreak! No guy could ever break my heart like the music industry did.

This is a typical story when you are pursuing your dreams. When you start taking action, a lot of people are suddenly trying to weigh in. And it becomes easy to doubt yourself. You are also “walking through the valley of the shadow of death,” which to me in many ways is a metaphor for the doubts and disappointments playing out in your mind.

When you decide to be all that you know you are meant to be, you have to face a lot of the things holding you back mentally, physically, and spiritually. (They all affect one another.) And certain situations, no matter how difficult they may seem in the moment, you MUST experience in order to get to the next chapters of your life. It’s like a video game, and the sooner you accept the tough situations as something that’s going to move you forward, the more it drives you in your desire to advance to the next level.

I forgot that I belonged to me at that time, and just like that (finger snap), the negative voices that I was so quick to ignore as a child began pushing me the wrong way. These were the voices of despair that I had unconsciously vowed to never follow. They became very loud and very real.

They told me that the problems in my music career were all my fault and that I had failed. My rational, intellectual voice was quickly being drowned out by the irrational voice of my ego that had personalized the experience. The ego voice was telling me, “The label people are smart and can’t be wrong about artists. I mean, could they? I don’t know? Oh no, I don’t KNOW.”

That’s the thing about the mind and why it should always be a servant to the heart. The mind has limitations, and these limitations are because the mind is like a computer. A computer only knows what has been put inside it. Our minds cannot fundamentally understand the point of following a passion. It cannot comprehend passion, and it can only “know” the information it knows already. The intellectual mind, when nurtured, can filter out what is in your control and what is not—and when it’s time to let the heart decide. When you allow your ego to take over, it often doesn’t feel at ease, unless it’s in control, which means it is uneasy often because you can’t control the circumstances of life. So when you let your ego drive, it is a fast way to a world of anxiety. But our hearts tell us that what “we know” is relative and that there are things we can do that have never been done before.

I didn’t have enough experience to know the difference. The even scarier part was these dark thoughts were a much more aggressive version of the not-so-positive thoughts I had as a child. This was a mixture of my own frivolous fears and the voices of real people, businesspeople, filling me with fears I never knew existed. They were putting limitations on me that I never knew were there!

The louder their voices got, the cloudier my sense of self became. I believed my fears, because to me, it had to be true now that others were also saying it, right? I started making associations that weren’t true. I tried to equate them like A+B=C. I determined that I wasn’t able to be a music artist, and that it had to be true because my first album, So Uncool, wasn’t “successful.” I was only fourteen years old, but that is when I began to belong to them instead of to me.

As far as I knew, the labels never made mistakes. And I told myself that if I was worth anything, then they’d know it. So I stepped away from music thinking that I wasn’t a musician, and even more so, that I wasn’t worthy of being one. I felt this way for many years, and so I focused solely on my other passions and talents. I didn’t understand that those voices of doubt, whether in my head or from the mouths of real people, would always be in some ways my constant companions because that’s simply how life works. The more you grow and the more you’re faced with, the more your mind has to analyze and digest. Mental constructs are a part of our humanity, and yes, haters gonna hate! But I didn’t know at the time that I could fight them. I had to fight them and I had to win!

This concept doesn’t just apply to the music industry. Some people think that being a celebrity is the only extraordinary thing to “be” or that popularity is what it means to be successful. How many times a day do you judge a life event by how many “likes” it gets on social media? I’ve even done it myself!

But this is not fair to us. Our worth cannot be based on what others believe, but what we CHOOSE to believe. What I’m talking about applies to whatever you are trying to do in life—whether you are an aspiring entertainer, writer, model, trainer, doctor, nurse, hairdresser, or bookkeeper! Whatever is in your heart, whether it’s pursuing a career you love or trying something new every week until you find what it is you love. It’s on the right track as long as it’s true of heart because “success” is what’s relative to YOU.

LEAVE THE DOUBTERS AND FIND ENCOURAGERS INSTEAD

As soon as you know what you want to do, and your gut is screaming out, you might have people step in with a list of “logical” reasons why you shouldn’t do that thing you know you need to do. But you have to take a real good look at those people who are setting roadblocks in YOUR life. #YOUSAIDWHATNOW?!

When you look at where people are in their lives, their point of view becomes clear. You have to weed out the people you love from the people you admire. Does that make sense? The two things are different. For instance, if you love your brother, but your brother has never been disciplined about anything, he’s probably not the best person to talk to when you need motivation to follow through with the things you are doing. If you love your mom, but your mom was always too scared to try anything new, it makes no sense to expect her to encourage you when stepping outside of your comfort zone. #CONSIDERTHESOURCE.

They may share their fears or doubts, and that’s fine, but you can’t wait for them to come around or allow their excuses to become your own. They may have certain wisdom, but they may be limited in their perspectives, and they are also not inside your head or your heart, so they may not know what you know about what you are capable of.

We are the heroes of our stories! And when you choose to be, that’s what the work of belonging to ourselves is about. Taking responsibility for your own life requires a lot of work and you will need support. We’ve gotta surround ourselves with like-minded people who are on a road of self-discovery, just like us, so that we can encourage each other.

Making room for those who are all about what you’re about also shows God and the Universe that you are serious about changing the world around you. By taking the steps yourself to change your path, and actually walking the walk and talking the talk, you open the door for God to assist you. You show Him that you are ready to step up each and every step of the way.