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At the tender age of 17, rising R&B star Samantha Mumba, who hit the UK charts at No. 2 with debut single 'Gotta Tell You', is keen to be taken seriously... She says, "I'm black and I'm from Ireland... It means I'm something totally different. There are lots of female artists my age around at the moment... I want to show a bit more attitude."
If you want to see the actual video, it's here but in less than brilliant sound quality.
It's a pretty good start to your career to have a transatlantic Top 5 single: this lost a tight battle with Eminem's 'The Real Slim Shady' for the top of the UK chart, and matched that song's Hot 100 peak of 4 in the US. A series of further hits (in Europe at least) proved that she wasn't a one-hit-wonder either but her career was a brief one and the few who noticed when she announced her retirement from music in 2010 must surely have been surprised that it took her so long. Rumours of an album to be called Legend Of The Red Panda were sadly never proven.
The trouble is that whilst it's a decent enough example of Swedish-produced RnB-lite pop circa 2000 it's a bit too production-line, and Mumba was never able to establish enough of a musical hook for people to latch onto her career. Obviously, as she says herself there hadn't been a lot of black Irish pop stars (Phil Lynott being the other obvious example) but once people had got over that she never seemed to create enough of an image for the audience outside Ireland, where she still seems to be some kind of celebrity. In the cut-throat world of early 2000s teen-oriented pop, this wasn't quite enough.
Also appearing on: Now 47, 48, 50, 51, 53
Available on: Gotta Tell You
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