Amerie

Last Updated on Sunday, 10 January 2010 02:35 Wednesday, 06 January 2010 23:43

Amerie, or if you know her really, really well, Amerie Mi Marie Roger was born on January 12th, 1980. Born to a Korean mother and African American father, she spent three years growing up in Korea - along with stints in Germany, Texas, Virginia and Alaska. Her father was a chief warrant officer so the family got moved around quiet a bit. Finally they settled down in Washington DC and Amerie calls this her home.

Although her first language is Korean she has her mother to thank for forcing her to learn and use English. She now rates herself as 'conversational' in Korean but often signs her name in Hangul (native language) when giving autographs. With her sister a lawyer the pressure was always on to be something traditional. Amerie says

"My family was really big on academics; they thought I would be a lawyer or a professor. So I said okay, I'm going to be a singer, but I knew I had to go to college first because I was already on the road to academia. I wanted to finish what I started."

After a ton of hard work her best successes were Why don't we fall in love (#23 Billboard Hot 100 / #10 Hot R&B/hip-hop Songs) and Talkin' to Me (#18 Hot R&B/hip-hop Songs). Her second album had her best known single 1 Thing for which she received two Grammy award nomination: 2006 Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best contemporary R&B album. We're surprised she didn't get an award for hot pants for the video.

Related: View our Amerie Gallery!

Amerie in a photoshoot for Giant Magazine.

Her latest album is In Love and War, released in November 2009. Mostly about being on the wrong side of love and battling to survive it Amerie describes the album as

"This album is very personal, whether I'm talking about my own past situations or situations the people close to me went through. I really wanted to make sure that everything I was writing wasn't too far from myself."

This album is also her first with Def Jam Recoreds and the only album she has produced without Rich Harrison. Speaking of the split with Columbia Amerie explained why she changed in an interview with Honey Mag

"Leaving Columbia was two-fold, the reason I went to Def Jam was specifically because of the company -- their marketing and promotions team," Amerie explained in an interview. "I love what they're doing, but the other reason was L.A. Reid. L.A. Reid and I have crossed paths for years...It wasn't that I wasn't happy. I felt that the project could've gotten more support and more push on the side of marketing and promotions. The people on the team are awesome, but I think what's happening is that the company's been changing. The executives have been changing. It's been like a revolving door and whenever that happens you're so busy focusing on getting all the people necessary for the company that you don't have time to set a plan. And when you do set a plan, then people leave. So that's just what happened. I just felt that, this was a period of time in the company where they're going through so much turmoil, it just wasn't going to be good for the project I had. So I decided I wanted to leave. It went pretty well."