Promoting her latest album, Concrete Rose, and her upcoming movie “Coach Carter” has given Ashanti an idea – to capture all the madness in a book. Maybe.
“I was thinking, do I want to do something towards the children, or do I want to do something like ‘Ashanti: Behind the Scenes’?” she said.
This of course would be Ashanti’s second book, her first being the 2002 collection of poetry “Foolish/ Unfoolish: Reflections on Love”. And being that she’s the type who lives to multitask, it could include moments from her life as a singer, as an actress and as an author. “It could be everything from going to the radio station, all the interviews, the hard part that a lot of people don’t see,” Ashanti said. “My skirt ripping onstage before I have to go out, my shoes coming off, just little things that happen that people don’t realize. All the hard work, the preparation, the ups, the downs – a lot of things, behind the scenes.”
Not that working on “Coach Carter” was all that hard, she insisted. Flashing back to high school was an easy first film role, she said, because she can relate to her character, Kyra, the girlfriend of a basketball star who tries to figure out her options when she learns she’s pregnant. “A lot of my friends actually went through a very similar situation,” she said.
Relating to her next character, Dorothy in a Muppets version of “The Wizard of Oz,” was also a snap. “I had a lot of fun, a lot of fun,” she said of the upcoming made-for-TV movie. “That was a little easier than Kyra. I guess just having that drive to be a singer, Dorothy wanted to get out of Kansas, she wanted to make her life better, so I can definitely relate to that.”
Ashanti said her drive to make her life better – and the beginning of her multitasking madness – started when she was at New York’s Glen Cove High School, where she did “everything” and was the youngest member of the school’s track-and-field team.
“I was in every after-school program,” she said, “you know, just in case. You have to have that plan B. And C.”
