Fantasia Monique Barrino, or simply Fantasia, is an American, Grammy Award-nominated, R&B/Soul singer, who rose to fame as the winner of the third season of the television series American Idol.
Barrino began singing in her church at the age of five. She was a member of The Barrino Family, a group that travelled and performed in The Carolinas and elsewhere in the American South.
She dropped out of high school due to a sexual assault that left her feeling embarrassed and harassed. Barrino has a young daughter, Zion Quari' Barrino, whom she had as a teenage single mother on August 8, 2001. The incident is not related to her subsequently giving birth to her daughter.
Her cousins are R&B singers K-Ci (Cedric Hailey) and Jo-Jo (Joel Hailey) who formed the singing group Jodeci along with the DeGrate brothers in 1990.
Fantasia Barrino made an immediate impression on American Idol with her stylized, gospel-influenced sound, and her explosive stage presence. Her audition version of John Fogerty/Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" made her an early favorite in the competition. Her standout performance during the course of the show was a heartfelt staging, begun seated, of the Porgy and Bess standard "Summertime" that left her in tears from "feeling the song" and earned raves from the judges, as well as landing her on the Emmy Awards's 2004 list of greatest television moments.
Nevertheless, Barrino's rise to the final two on American Idol was plagued with controversies, including accusations of racism when she and two other well-praised African American female singers in the competition, LaToya London and Jennifer Hudson, all landed in the bottom three of that week's voting. Guest artist Elton John labeled the outcome "racist". Other concerns were raised over her as a single mother being a poor role model and charges of rigged voting and busy telephone signals.
In the final performance of the season that formed the basis upon which America voted, Barrino offered a second performance of "Summertime" that again drew enormous praise from the judges?including Simon Cowell's remarks that she was the best contestant among the over 70 Idol champions crowned nationally and internationally since the show began its first global incarnations. On the finale, 65 million votes were cast in order to determine the winner on May 26, 2004, up from 24 million in 2003. It is still the highest finale vote in the show's history. In the end Fantasia beat out runner-up Diana DeGarmo by a margin of 2% (1.3 million votes).
Barrino participated in the U.S. tour with the other American Idol finalists and appeared in the 2004 Christmas special.
Now billed as just Fantasia, she released her first single in June 2004 on the RCA record label. The single included "I Believe" ? cowritten by former Idol contestant Tamyra Gray (who also sang backup on it) ? which Fantasia performed on the finale of Idol, the Aretha Franklin hit "Chain of Fools" (released before on an American Idol compilation), and her signature version of "Summertime". The single entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number one, the first artist to do so with her first record. On the sales chart, the single spent 11 consecutive weeks at number one (10 weeks in Canada), giving it the longest consecutive stay at #1 on that chart for an American Idol contestant. The CD, "I Believe", went on to become the top selling single of 2004 in the U.S and has since been certified double platinum by the CRIA.
Fantasia released an album, Free Yourself, in November 2004. It debuted at #8 on the Billboard 200 pop album chart, selling 240,000 copies in its first week. Just two months after its release, it sold over one million copies and went platinum. To date, it has sold over 2 million copies in the U.S. The singles "Truth Is" and "Free Yourself" became huge R&B hits, reaching #2 and #3 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Tracks chart, while the controversial "Baby Mama" ? which critics charged romanticized single motherhood ? reached the top 20. Fantasia did even better on the Billboard Adult R&B Airplay, where she was the first artist of any kind to simultaneously have two of the top three songs, and where "Truth Is" set a record stay at #1 by a female with 14 weeks. However, none of these singles has repeated "I Believe"'s success on the more-pop-oriented Hot 100, where "Truth Is" reached the highest at #21.
