{"id":6242,"date":"2019-06-26T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T16:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=6242"},"modified":"2019-06-26T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T16:24:07","slug":"too-good-to-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/too-good-to-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Too good to fail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/div>

Too good to fail<\/h1>
How the great recession helped launch one alumna\u2019s music career.\n\n<\/div>
By Tony Marchetti
Photo by Jewel Ashley of Kotee Kreations<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/header>\n\n\n\n

Since graduating from Monmouth University in 2004, Natalie Imani has established herself as a go-to vocal accompanist for some of the music industry\u2019s biggest stars\u2014including John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, and Nicki Minaj\u2014while making a name for herself as a solo singer-songwriter. But had it not been for the collapse of Bear Stearns in 2008, that might not have happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imani had been working at the storied investment banking firm for three years when, to her and many other people\u2019s surprise, it went under. She was told she could take a job with JPMorgan Chase, the company that purchased Bear, or receive her severance package and move on. As it happened, she had just auditioned for and was offered a spot singing with Jazmine Sullivan, a Grammy nominated singer and songwriter. \u201cSo Bear Stearns went out of business one week, and the next week I was singing background,\u201d recalls Imani. She hasn\u2019t looked back since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imani performed with Sullivan for three years, and says that period helped her take her career to the next level. \u201cA lot of people ask me how they can get into this type of work,\u201d says Imani, who went by Natalie Curtis as a student at Monmouth. \u201cOne way is auditioning. But also, I think that once you\u2019re \u2018in the network\u2019 people know you, so they\u2019ll call you to see if you\u2019re available for different things. And I feel singing with Jazmine put me in that network, because that was the first time I actually went on tour.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was 6 when I decided I wanted to be a singer, and now I\u2019m living that life. So sometimes you have to take a risk to really do what you\u2019re passionate about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Since 2011, Imani has toured internationally with John Legend. Among other things, the connection led to her appearance in the film La La Land<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m one of the background singers you see when John performs on stage during the movie. I\u2019m the singer in the middle with the short hair. It\u2019s a very brief performance, but I\u2019m in there,\u201d she says with a laugh. It also landed her on the Grammy winner\u2019s 2018 \u201cA Legendary Christmas\u201d special, which aired last December. That wasn\u2019t her first TV appearance: In April of last year, fans\u2014and much of the internet\u2014went crazy over her duet with Cardi B on <\/a>Saturday Night Live<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imani says she is putting the finishing touches on her latest solo effort, which she hopes to release in July. (For the latest on that, and to watch the video for her last single, \u201cCranberry Liquor,\u201d visit natalieimani.com<\/a>.) There\u2019s also talk of taking \u201cA Legendary Christmas Tour\u201d on the road in Europe this winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With some downtime between tours, Imani has been spending time speaking with schoolchildren in and around her hometown of Philadelphia, telling them about life as a musician and the importance of following one\u2019s dreams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI let them know that achieving their dreams is possible,\u201d says Imani. \u201cI was 6 when I decided I wanted to be a singer, and now I\u2019m living that life. So sometimes you have to take a risk to really do what you\u2019re passionate about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHonestly, if Bear Stearns never went out of business, I\u2019m not sure I would\u2019ve taken that risk\u2014to leave a 9-to-5 job that was paying me well to just up and go follow my dreams,\u201d she adds. \u201cBut that pushed me to pursue what I really wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the great recession helped launch one alumna\u2019s music career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-back"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"The Back","issue":"Summer 2019","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6242"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6747,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6242\/revisions\/6747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}