Shontelle is the 23 year-old Bajan singer-songwriter who's set to take the world by storm after signing with music mogul Steve Rifkind's SRC records. Her unique story begins in the West Indies on the beautiful Island of Barbados' capital city of Bridgetown. The oldest of 3 sisters, Shontelle has always been an over-achiever who despite being at the top of her class competed across the island in several sports. However her true calling as a prolific songwriter and talented singer would draw her away from both the field and classroom and onto center stage.
Always finding activities to keep herself busy, while in high school Shontelle decided to attend "Cadets" camp - where she served as drill sergeant over a newcomer named Rhianna. "She was a good cadet, though there was one occasion when I had to make her drop and give me ten push-ups. We laugh about it now and I think she's forgiven me." Little did either of the teens know that they would remain friends and both follow the same dream of becoming international stars in the music business.
Fast forward to 2005, and the up and coming talent scores a hit heard far beyond the Caribbean as the writer of the girl-power anthem "Roll". Producers Evan Rogers and Carl Sturken of SRP Records , who had discovered Rihanna in Barbados and brought her to the world stage, heard the song on a Bajan radio station and felt that it had international hit potential. They sought out the writer of the song to license it for a cover version, and had a pleasant shock; "We couldn't believe that she was such a great singer and so young and beautiful, and hadn't been discovered yet" says Rogers.
They signed her immediately, and spent the next six months creating her debut album. During a period Shontelle describes as "one of the defining moments of my life", she flew around the country meeting with executives from the world's top labels and eventually decided to sign to Steve Rifkind's SRC Records - joining the ranks of the many successful artists in the Universal Music family.
Her debut smash single, "T-Shirt" , which features a soft laid back vocal on a mid-temp track is sure to be the "she-anthem" of the year. On the reggae-soul influenced "Life Is Not an Easy Road" she takes the beats down a gear, back to the sun drenched beaches of her native Barbados, while the lyrics punctuate the song with hard hitting social commentary. "I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night with this beat in my head. I started writing straight away just thinking about society, poverty and the underprivileged." Head- strong single "Battle Cry" speaks to the generation so much that the Obama Campaign chose to feature it on, Yes We Can: Voices of Movement, the convention sampler. Rounding out the cd is the snake-charmer influenced and dancehall favorite "Focus Pon Me" and "Superwoman" which speak to female empowerment and social consciousness proving that Shontelle is in fact a talented and intelligent artist on the rise.
