Who's That Girl?

Méa Against The Music: The diva-DJ isn't sure if she likes the Madonna comparisons. Photo By: seth sabal

Singing DJ Méa teeters on the edge of superstardom.

by Sean O'Neal

"I really like Madonna and the way she would reinvent herself, market herself and always change her styles," admits Méa. The singing, DJ-ing soon-to-be-sensation is on the phone, recuperating at home in Los Angeles after a slight neck injury from one of her many snowboarding escapades.

"I've been compared to Madonna a lot, and I really don't like that. But I can hear it sometimes. "You sound like Madonna' is one of the worst things someone could say to me. But it is a compliment because she always has been one of my idols in the past. But at the same time, I wanna sound like somebody else."

It's safe to say she's of two minds on the issue.

Méa speaks fast and feverishly about being heard and loved. She says "ciao" instead of "bye." She refers to her audience as her "fans." She's even speaks with a slightly pompous, Valley Girl-ish undertone. Maybe L.A. got the best of this Kansas City native. Her excitement is childlike and charmingly naive. (She keeps her age a secret.)

It was DMA magazine—a respected DJ trade mag—which deemed her "the Madonna of the new millennium" in 2001. "I am more of a rocker," she insists. "It's often edgy. You can even hear a Nine Inch Nails influence in one of the songs."

Méa is a multi-faceted club spectacle, belting out vocal hooks while rocking the dancefloor with anthem house and blissful breakbeats.

The two-pronged attack sets her apart from her esteemed peers DJ Rap, Sandra Collins and DJ Irene. She's essentially a pop diva trapped behind the decks. That's made her a heroine to women in the DJ world and a promising phenom with crossover appeal.

A soprano in the choir while she was growing up in Kansas, Méa first made her mark in the mid-1990s as a singer in the KC house music scene. She learned to DJ out of revenge; an ex-boyfriend left his turntables at her house and she kept them. "I just taught myself how to play," she says. "Music was always really easy for me. I played, like, 12 instruments."

She experienced her first rave when she and some friends took a weekend trip to Chicago. "I was so overwhelmed by the house scene there. It was such a happy movement, and I wanted to be a part of it." Soon enough she sold her share in a Kansas City clothing shop, packed some bags and moved to Chi-Town.

Once in Chicago, she sang in the studio for the Underground Construction label and DJ'd at night. When the label realized she was a dual threat, they signed her up for both a DJ mix-CD and a disc with vocals.

Her first globally distributed CD, 2000's Shaken, Not Stirred, had Méa oozing out her strong, soulful vocals over Rick Garcia's funky house beats. It led to gigs alongside heavy-hitters like Donald Glaude, DJ Dan and DJ Sneak, and a deal with Moonshine Records. It wasn't long before she moved to L.A.

Her mix CD, No Shame, released last year, offered a taste of Méa's enticingly marketable stage presence. Alive, her forthcoming artist album, produced by Nynex, was originally scheduled for release on Moonshine. But Méa bought out the rights and is currently pitching the album to major labels. She believes pop stardom is just a heartbeat way.

"The new album is more electronic than Madonna is poppy. And there are a couple radio-friendly pop songs on there because, you know, some people might find that more interesting," she says. "That's one of the reasons I'm trying to sell it to major labels. You know, you gotta get that one song on the radio to get the rest of your album heard." It's a material world, and she's a material girl.

Méa, Thu., Nov. 25, 9 p.m., $16/$11 before 11 p.m., with Jeff Heart, Coda, Mynd, Zero Alpha, Prophet and more, Emerald City, 460 N. Second St., 215-413-2500, www.bassmentcru.net.