Blu Cantrell (born Tiffany Cobb on October 1, 1976 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an American R&B singer. She was born into a biracial family of jazz enthusiasts from Providence, Rhode Island. She and her five siblings were born of a European American mother who is a Jazz singer and an African American father who was a NBA player. In 2000, Cantrell was discovered by an A&R executive and began singing backup for artists such as Puff Daddy, Truth Hurts and Faith Evans. She released her debut album, So Blu, in 2001. It featured the hit single "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)", which peaked at #2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The single earned Blu two Grammy nominations for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song. She also was crowned Lady Of Soul of the year 2001 and won American Music Awards nominations. In 2003, she released her second album, Bittersweet, which spawned the single Breathe, a collaboration with Sean Paul, which peaked at #1 for four weeks in the UK, despite failing to reach the top 50 in the U.S. Bittersweet didn't perform as well on the charts as her debut album but did earn Cantrell a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album and managed to enter the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart at #8. Blu has hosted a lot of fashion shows from Los Angeles to New York City and Atlanta. Blu co-hosted MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards of 2003. Cantrell was the subject of controversy when photos from a brief period of work as a nude model for Black Tail magazine in 1995 came to light. More controversy followed after the release of Bittersweet, which featured a DVD with an interview with Wendy Williams mentioning a past relationship with rapper Jay-Z. This sparked several rumors of tension between Cantrell and singer Beyoncé Knowles, who is currently (as of 2005) dating the rapper. The rumors were denied by both parties. The singer has said to the press: "I have posed nude in the past and I will in the future, I'm not making porn, porn is when you do a video of sex. Posing nude is not making porn".
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