R&B singer Mila J is still standing tall Music rolls on at Folsom, 50 years after Johnny Cash made history
If attaining stardom is a mix of talent, image and pure luck, then singer Mila J should be in a better position than most.
Mila had her first brush with fame at 9 when she appeared in Prince’s 1991 music video “Diamonds and Pearls.” In the 1990s and early 2000s, she performed with R&B girl groups before reinventing herself as a solo artist.
While a breakout hit has eluded her, Mila hasn’t lost her determination. She recently released a five-track R&B EP named after her birthday, “11.18.”
That effort, released as a download-only and independently via Silent Partner Entertainment/November Reign, came after years of trying to issue a proper debut, a quest that dates back to the mid-2000s, when Universal Motown was once set to issue an album she said would be called “Split Personality.”
It wasn’t to be. In the years since, Mila has seen her younger sister, Jhene Aiko, become one of the next big things in R&B.
Despite a career full of stops and starts, there isn’t any frustration evident in the 35-year-old. This despite working in an industry that can be an uphill battle for women in hip-hop and R&B.
Born Jamila Chilombo, the singer grew up in a South L.A. home that was an artistic playground. Her father, a pediatrician and musician, converted the family garage into a studio. Her mother was an art teacher who encouraged Mila and her siblings to explore their creativity.
After her older sister Miyoko began booking music videos, Mila quickly followed suit, catching the attention of record producer and manager Chris Stokes, who proposed they form a group that would eventually become Gyrl. With a sound heavily influenced by ’90s R&B staples like Aalyiah and TLC, Mila performed on national tours while only in middle school. But the glamour was short-lived.
Although the group released several singles, Gyrl never completed an album, fading out after a few years. Mila J joined another Stokeshelmed girl group, Dame Four; the group fizzled after a few singles.
She took a break from music, at one point working at a luxury spa. She reemerged in 2006 as a solo artist.
Decades of working in the industry reinforced to Mila that getting signed to a label is only the first step in “making it.” “When you’re an artist and creative, you think that’s all it’s going to be about, and that’s maybe 10 percent of it,” she said. “I think learning how to deal with the business aspect of it is the part that’s draining.”
For women artists, particularly black women, success in hip-hop and R&B comes with unique challenges.
“There are a lot of artists like her that have been around for a very long time and have varied levels of success but have not been able to break through,” said Cornell University hip-hop scholar Oneka LaBennett.
The success, however, of R&B artists doing it their own way — Solange, SZA, even Mila’s younger sister, Aiko — shows the public is craving more variety and will support those who push boundaries.
“It’s super cool,” Mila said of her sister’s success. “For her to succeed living her dream, that’s dope.”
For now, Mila is staying focused on her craft, creating music that both feeds her soul and satisfies her fans.
“I can’t say what the moment will be for me, but I’m prepared to put out quality product,” she said. “I can’t necessarily call it.”
Folsom State Prison, Calif. — Irony isn’t something the residents of Folsom State Prison spend much time contemplating. But it’s not lost on Roy McNeese Jr. exactly where he spends every Tuesday. That’s when he leads music theory classes for fellow inmates looking to turn their lives around.
McNeese’s classroom is a compact space adjacent to Folsom’s expansive, echo-heavy dining hall. Prisoners wishing to hone their instrumental or vocal chops while serving time, or to learn from McNeese how to write music and better understand songwriting techniques, enter the room each week through a heavily fortified metal door — a door with two words on it: “Condemned Row.” Nowadays, however, stark gray cells that long ago housed death row inmates — before San Quentin took over housing them in 1937 — are used to store electronic keyboards, drum kits, guitar amplifiers and other gear for the prison’s music program, one of several rehabilitation programs Folsom offers.
The equipment is used by about 40 inmates who play in one or more bands at Folsom, which gained worldwide fame thanks to Johnny Cash’s career-defining 1956 hit “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Today, although the prison gift shop doesn’t shy from its connection to Cash — selling “Folsom Prison” and “I Walk the Line” baseball caps, key chains and other tchotchkes — prison officials focus more on a revitalized music program, which they hope will help foster a sense of harmony among inmates.
“When we’re playing, and everybody locks in together, I’m not in prison anymore,” said McNeese, 55. Except he is, and many of Folsom’s artists have quite the rap sheet. McNeese is serving a sentence of 33 years to life with possibility of parole on convictions for one count of second-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder.
McNeese was speaking during a loose band rehearsal in the same dining hall where Cash and his wife, singer June Carter Cash, and their musical entourage performed on Jan. 13, 1968, a session recorded and released as “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.”
On this day, the feeling of musical connection and emotional release is palpable as three other inmates, with McNeese looking on, power through a hard-driving progressive jazz-rock tune they’ve been working on in his songwriting class.
“Johnny Cash is one of the legends — he definitely has his own voice,” said inmate Gary Calvin, 59, one of the anchors of the music program who plays bass for several groups, including the trio that was on display for visiting reporters and camera crews.
Calvin has been in state prison since 2005 and at Folsom for more than five, he said. He hopes to be released “in three or four more years, if things go right,” although state records show he is not eligible for parole until March 2029.
He’s serving a life sentence with possibility of parole as a third-strike offender, most recently convicted for assault with a firearm, possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and battery with serious injury.
His musical taste runs more to hip-hop, soul and R&B. He and many of his brethren responded enthusiastically to a performance in August by Chicago rapper, actor and film producer Common. David Sims, 38, of Sonoma City, looking up from the automobile skeleton he was attempting to repair in the prison’s auto shop training facility, said, “We wish there were more performances like that. It really brought everybody’s morale up for a while. Once we get back out there, if we can participate in society, we can be more positive.”