Dawn Richard Featured in Edge Magazine

It’s been six years since Dawn Richard was chosen to be a part of Diddy’s ‘Making the Band,’ picked from over 10,000 auditions nationwide. As a member of Danity Kane, Dawn toured the world, topped the charts, and became a part of Bad Boy history, but the trials that she went through during and after her catapult to stardom is what really helped shape the singer to what she is today. Dawn caught up with Edge magazine and talked about her new mixtape, ‘A Tell Tale Heart,’ how she found her strength after Danity Kane disbanded and how Dirty Money came to pass after she was unemployed and without a label:

On Her New Mixtape
“I wanted people to literally fall into my heart. And if they could hear each beat of my heart those songs would be the sound. If you took a walk in my heart those songs would be the soundtrack.”

“Releasing the mixtape was the best thing I could have done but I was so scared. The day it came out I just shut my computer, I really didn’t want to bomb. I didn’t even know if people wanted a solo project from me and I didn’t want to force it on them.[...]Literally if A Tell Tale Heart is a fall into my heart then Golden Heart [her upcoming solo project] is the actual putting on the armor and walking to the journey of it all.”

On Finding Her Strength
“No one will trust in you if you don’t trust in yourself. In the beginning it was feeling sorry for what I’ve been through but as a woman now? I love who I am. Every time I fall, I feel like I dodge the next crack.”

On Life After Danity Kane’s Break-Up
“There was no solo career, contrary to popular belief. I didn’t know where the next check was coming from and I refused to stay in that position.”

After that, Dawn began submitting new records to former boss Diddy daily, and it was then that he approached her about forming a new group with songwriter Kaleena Harper, birthing what we now know as Dirty Money.

“Kaleena and I were going through our own paths and journeys in love. We felt that if Puff wanted to tell a story of a woman he needed to have a woman’s perspective.”

“There are a lot of girls like me”, she says with intensity, “I represent reality. There are those artists who are untouchable and larger than life and then you have those artists who are you and people need that, the artists that you feel are really telling your story.”

Read more over at Edge Magazine