CHARLI BALTIMORE

You haven’t really heard Charli Baltimore until now. In 2002 she earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Rap Solo Performance, for her single "The Diary”.

Featuring production from the chart topping hip hop producer, Irv Gotti and the Murder Inc stable, The Diary is not only one of the hottest albums from a female MC, it was one of the most eagerly anticipated projects of 2002. Rough, rugged, determined and defiantly female, The Diary is the album that Charli Baltimore had waited her whole life to make.

The diary may be her solo debut but Charli Baltimore has been a hip-hop fixture for years. She's added her hard hitting 2 cents and then some to a variety of A-list projects, most recently Ja Rule's "Down Ass Chick" and the Murder Inc anthem "Down 4 U".

The artist, also known as Tiffany Lane, was born in Philly and raised in Jackson, Tennessee. As a kid she loved writing poems and by the time she was 11, Charli had taken her love of poetry to another level. Inspired by Big Daddy Kane, Charli started rhyming and battling kids in the neighborhood. When she returned to Philadelphia, she was in high school and soon found herself leading her own hard knock life.

A chance meeting with the late hip-hop legend Biggie Smalls would alter the course of Charli's life. He laced her with a new moniker and helped steer Charli towards fulfilling her own destiny on the mic. Yet fate played its hand and a series of tragedies slowed Charli down. Thankfully by the late 90's Charli had gathered up her strength and in 1999 landed a deal with Untertainment. Work began on her album Cold As Ice but after numerous delays, the label folded- the news reaching Charli while she was out on a promo tour. Her album in limbo and her label disbanded, Charli's hip-hop dream seemed deferred. Yet despite the gloomy prospects there was a light in the form of Irv Gotti.

Charli and Gotti had collaborated on sessions for her ill-fated album and after Cold As Ice's fate was sealed Gotti reached out, offering to help Charli with another deal. "Everytime he would bring me into the studio each record would be hotter than the next," Charli recalls. "It's almost as though Irv was testing me. He'd tell me I'll help you get a deal but in many ways he was molding me for Murder Inc to come." Charli and Irv worked together for nearly two years. "It's like boot camp with Murder Inc! Irv really put me to work on those records. He was making sure that if he did sign me to Murder Inc it wasn't gonna be a fluke. When I met Gotti he said he'd never met a girl who can totally spit, who writes with no help. I said 'That's me!' but I had to prove it and that made me focus and made me stronger. Instead of letting the negativity get to me it actually made me work harder. I'd heard some of the things people said about me and my response was to just come back out and continue to make music." While she was holed up in the studio Charli found the time to make her big screen debut in Spike Lee's Bamboozled. The part was small but the experience was one Charli enjoyed and looks forward to having again.

Where Charli is right now is focused and fiery. Armed with steely resolve and hard as nails beats and rhymes, Charli is ushering in the new era of female MCs and opening the pages of her life in hopes her joy and pain can impact others. Asked what she wants people to get when they listen to The Diary, Charli replies, "Go for your goal. It sounds cheesy but it's real and if anyone is the perfect person to say it, it's me. All the drama I went through and people trying to shut me down- I rose above it. I knew I had the talent to rise above."