Lumidee

LATIN ARTIST

BIOGRAPHY

Lumidee Cedeño (born August 24, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter and rapper. Cedeño was born in East Harlem where she was raised by her grandparents. She quickly rose to fame in 2003 with the release of her song "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)", which reached the top ten in over ten countries and number one in various European countries. Cedeño's father died in 1995, and she and her four siblings were raised by her grandparents. She began singing and rapping at the age of twelve. She was diagnosed withrheumatoid arthritis at the age of fourteen, after she was misdiagnosed with lupus. After graduating high school, she collaborated with a local neighborhood producer named DJ Tedsmooth to record her debut single, "Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)" for anindependent record label called Straight Face. Lumidee cites Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliot, MC Lyte and Mary J. Blige as her major influences. She signed with Universal Records, where she released her debut album called Almost Famous on June 23, 2003. Her single peaked at number 3 in the U.S. and number 2 in theUK, but it was her only hit until the 2007 release of "She's Like The Wind." According to Nielsen SoundScan, Almost Famous sold 276,000 copies in the U.S. For the next few years, Lumidee was not in the mainstream music industry in the US, instead veering more towards reggaeton and dancehall music. After her hit single "Never Leave You" faded, Lumidee went overseas to continue her musical career in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands. She released "Grimey Streets" in 2004, which was a mixtape consisting of new material, freestyles and tracks from Almost Famous. Lumidee was also featured on several tracks in this era, having moderate success in Europe. However, due to her debut single being her only big hit to date, she was placed in the one-hit wonder category. In 2006, Lumidee released a song for the FIFA World Cup album soundtrack entitled "Dance!". It featured a sample of the Whitney Houston track, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." The song was a club hit in the most of Europe, successfully entering the charts in the countries where it was officially released. For the New York branch, Cedeño was named youth ambassador of the Arthritis Foundation’s arthritis walk in 2007. On April 17, she released her second album calledUnexpected, which was released under TVT Records. In an interview with Vibe, Lumidee spoke about signing with TVT Records stating, "TVT Records is the perfect way for me to come back and again I'm coming out of left field, just like with Never Leave You. Nobody ever thought of me coming back on a street credible label like TVT ... Actually, nobody ever thought of me really even coming back, period." The U.S. single, "She's Like the Wind", peaked at 43, but it was not released in Europe. There, the label released the single "Crazy" featuring Pitbull which had moderate chart success in Germany, Austria and the UK. Lumidee made an appearance on MTV Cribs, showing her New Jersey home, which aired on August 6, 2007. On May 13, 2009, Lumidee released a mixtape called I'm Up, Vol. 1 from her label, Logy Music Entertainment. In late 2009, Lumidee worked on another mixtape entitledLuminadee, which was released exclusively on Coast2CoastMixtapes.com in early January 2010. Lumidee was working on an album which was set to be released sometime in 2010, but did not materialize. In 2011, she appeared in a re-work of Remady’s dance hit No Superstar. and in 2011 she released the how sick is this song featuring K.R. In 2011, she collaborated with rapper Somaya Reece on the single "Dale Mami". The video debuted on Mun2's "Urban Tip" on January 11, 2012.