“We’re all in the Seventh Street building like a great big family,” says Vivian Green, one of Philly’s loveliest sweet-sophisticated-soul wonders, of Axis Music Group’s Old City headquarters. Her Axis-produced debut CD A Love Story will be released -- with a heavy promotional push -- through Columbia on November 12. “Me, Aries, Kindred, even Musiq (Soulchild); we’ve been doing our records at the same time. We’re part of a little music mecca.”

Indeed, local ladies are poised to take over national release sheets: Black Lily co-conspirators Jazzyfatnastees just put out their sophomore CD The Tortoise & The Hare, the same week Eve put out her third disc. A Touch Of Jazz discoveries Floetry see their Floetic debut on Dreamworks in October, as local lady Jerzee Monet did with Love & War weeks ago. The Roots' due-November rock-jam-jawn Phrenology will feature so much Jaguar Wright, it might as well be her second CD. Melanie Campbell -- one third of Burning Brides -- gets her major label debut next week as V2 re-releases a remastered Fall of the Plastic Empire. Kindred -- with new-mom Ms. Aja -- Aries, Flo Brown, Eltro led by Diana Prescott, Cynthia Mason, Ursula Rucker and Jill Scott have either just finished CDs or are recording with the intent of first-quarter 2003 releases.

With its talk of deadlines, real and imagined, of desired happy-family scenarios and a timeline of fear, loathing, love lost and found, Green's A Love Story is a linear, oddly mature tale of one life deeply lived-in: hers. Throughout the solitude and attitude of dysfunction is laced a voice of pure-spun gold. It drifts through sensuous rhythm-and-blues that hums while her voice bleats and toots. Think baby Anita O'Day with some Minnie Ripperton mixed in, along with a tad of the clarity of Barbra Streisand.

"I wanted this record to be a reflection of me," says Green, a polite and cheerful but blunt woman who makes no bones about correcting or questioning one's questions, "an honest album of songs that happened to me. Every word. Every wish."

Green, 23, was born in East Oak Lane, where Lawnton meets Lakeside, on the outskirts of Cheltenham. "It wasn't as if I grew up in a ghetto or anything," she laughs, talking up a upper-middle-class existence of parents (government engineer dad and housewife mom) and schooling at Germantown's Parkway High branch where she finished by her junior year. "We weren't rich, but it was a well-rounded atmosphere, an educated one." She giggles, wondering aloud if not being from a ghetto makes her less than credible. She decides no.

"Everyone gets exposed to different things depending on where they're from. Neither is better or worse." The soundtrack to her young life was Broadway, Streisand, Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder. "I wanted to hear Pearlie all the time."

From this picturesque existence, you'd imagine a record like a '40s musical. Instead, it's nearer to Happiness or Serial Mom. Though Green's CD is about her life between 18 and 23, its angsty lyrical tenor is borne of a long backstory: an abusive father, the loss of a house, a child -- Vivian -- leaving home at age 15 to live with a godmother.

"It was a very dysfunctional household," she says, holding back a laugh. "My father was -- every day -- abusive to my mother. When it came to him treating me like he treated her, I just left. And I haven't talked to him since."

"Wishful Thinking" is the most whimsically twisted but pragmatic moment on the CD; where everyday desires -- a brother in college, a simple vacation with a husband -- are nothing more than daydreams. "Since my father caused all that pain, I just wanted my family to be OK. I wanted my life with my own fiance (drummer Eric Trevett) to be OK."

Though she'd been writing from early on, by age 15 she became a basement-dwelling lyricist and a worry to her godmother. "She worried that my stuff was too dark, too unhappy." It wasn't long though until she got into the sunlight, making the acquaintance of Michael McCary of Boyz II Men, who asked her to join his writing/publishing company. There she wrote for a 13-year-old Britney Spears and Boyz as well as recording her own demos that caught the ear of RuffHouse Records. One hitch: a mean old dad who wouldn't let her sign a contract. "He was really not a nice person," she says, her laugh not so pronounced. "Listening to those tapes, all I can say is Œwhy is that person trying to sound like Toni Braxton?' Maybe it's better that getting signed -- that level of success -- didn't happen till now. I've grown as a singer and a songwriter. I wouldn't have told all my business in song at age 15. Too deep. Now, I can I tell all my business. Besides, I may have got stuck in a teenie-bop world."

So she stuck with the writing and sang at places like Zanzibar Blue and Chris' until she hooked up with Jill Scott in 1999 readying to gig behind Words and Music. They met at the top floor of 17th and Arch's Bell Tower, fell into instant-like and toured the world, with Green as a backing vocalist.

It was exec manager/producer Chauncey Childs -- the holy ghost of Philly's Axis Music trinity of James Poyser and Vikter Duplaix -- who found her when she was writing/performing (first pre-Jill, then again during the tour) with Malik Pendelton, another local singer/songwriter showcasing just-signed-to-Atlantic material at the time. He was immediately floored. "Between hearing her blow and seeing her -- and she's gorgeous -- I knew how great she was," says Childs, who wanted her to continue writing while developing her touring chops. When she quit the Scott tour, Green got immediate major label attention, thanks in part to Childs' persistence. By December, Columbia turned out to be the most excited. She began writing with Axis' newer production dogs Anthony Bell and Junius Bervine, a musician she's known since non-denominational Christian-church days.

Green's Love is one long story of growing up. From a child's vision of what should be, to unhappy romances mirroring the heartache of her parents through to a fairy-tale end of true romance, the CD comes off as a real-time record of soul-searching, horrible days, wonderful wishes, rainy afternoons, frustrations, breakups, aftermaths and answered prayers.

Childs knows she's got amazing things going for her: tremendous writing skills and powerful performance. At a recent Zanzibar Blue showcase she emitted a surprisingly rugged effervescence of her emotive singing.

With Columbia-sanctioned control ("I can call Tommy Mottola") over writing and production, she feels at one with her hero, Streisand, a woman whose career is life-long. "This record is my story. It's not dressed up to be radio or to be pop. That thought, the stories I tell, may not be original. But it's mine. Nobody else's."