RIKKI LA ROUGE

Rikki La Rouge:Biography: Rikki La Rouge's father and grandmother bought her her first Peavey mic and amp system in 1988. The first time that Rikki performed on stage was in 1992 as a part of a tap group routine to the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo" in a dance recital called "From His Hands". In 1993,after Rikki heard the music of Prince Rikki's dream of being in the music business began. First she started singing and then Rikki started to write her own songs. In the beginning under Prince's influence Rikki learned alot about singing, writing songs and life. Prince had been the main influence on Rikki La Rouge. Rikki started out as a "garage singer/songwriter", she used to go to a garage for hours and sing, come up with lyrics,rap and have a good time doing it. When Rikki stopped using the garage she continued to write,sing,rap and record on a tape recorder in her room what she was doing. Alot of the music that she made was improvisational and so in a way Rikki was a singer/ songwriter who captured the spirit of a jam band. Later on in order to record she'd use keyboards, two radios one with the track and the other to record everything, a mic and amp, beat production CD-ROMS, and a computer. For the better part of the 90's and into the 2000's she was still looking for a stagename and a genre that would suit her best. In 1997 she was in her first talent show. Her time spent doing talent shows which lasted from 1997 to 2002 helped her improve as a performer and the songs she sang were for the most part Selena songs. The last show Rikki La Rouge was in was the 2002 Interact Talent Show. She performed the Spanish Selena classic "Como La Flor." At the end she received a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes. The year before she went to NYSMMA, a Music festival for students in band and chorus to participate in. During her academic career Rikki was in Band and Chorus. She played the Clarinet and sang Alto. The song she sang at the festival was a selection from 'The Sound of Music' entitled "My Favorite Things". The judge reviewing her performance gave her a good review and told her at the end that she had a good stage presence. In 2003 Rikki became a BMI songwriter. In the past she had made music in English and Spanish as well as in many genres of music and her bilingual song catalog would come to reflect that. Before switching to Metal and choosing the name Rikki La Rouge, she had reflected her environment by working in Rap and Hip Hop Rikki made homemade raps and beat mixtapes and wrote a couple rhyme books to go along with her other song books. As an experiment she decided to record in Spanish what she was doing in English. Even though Rikki La Rouge had a love of that genre of music and a history with the music she had a deeper love of Rock and Metal so she made the switch because it was time for a change and it was the music that she had grown up listening to and being inspired by. Her main influences in Metal were Ozzy Osbourne and Poison they were the artists that inspired her to rock. From her BMI song catalog Rikki took all of her Metal songs and assembled a Metal repetoire. The answer to the question of "what shall I call myself?" was answered when she went on a Rock Name generator website and typed in her real name then after a second or two she became Rikki La Rouge. Her sound began as Traditional Heavy Metal but slowly the artistic direction shifted into an element of Death Metal. Her lyrics got darker and scarier than before and there was also a change in the way she sang Rikki shifted from the way that she had been singing for the last decade and a half into a harder vocal style. Basically, her sound is a mix of all of the transitions she's made in Metal. There is a strong Hard Rock influence in the sound as well. The year 2004 saw big changes for Rikki La Rouge first with the new name and genre and second her arrival in cyber space with the launch of her website. After years of making amateur recordings on tape recorders Rikki La Rouge finally went into a professional recording studio to begin work on new music in the new genre. -VALERIE NIEVES

PRINCE

SELENA

OZZY OSBOURNE

BLACK SABBATH

POISON