A Song Before Dinner
Robert Caplin for The New York Times
ON a recent Saturday in Midtown, Julissa Bermudez lounged on a brown leather sofa in the Sony Recording Studios, awaiting her moment with the maestro.
Ms. Bermudez, a 22-year-old former fashion model who is now the host of the youth affairs talk show “The Center” on BET every weekday, had an informal singing audition with Rodney Jerkins, the Midas-touch record producer.
While on-air chitchat about college applications and prom dresses has its moments, Ms. Bermudez — who was born in the Dominican Republic and was raised in Elmhurst, Queens — harbors slightly loftier show business dreams.
She had just returned from Los Angeles, hopscotching among meetings with talent managers and casting directors. She pulled a script from a black quilted Marc Jacobs bag. “It’s a Jack Black comedy called ‘Be Kind Rewind,’ ” she said, shrugging. “There’s a part called Cindy they want me to read for.”
This evening she’d landed every aspiring pop singer’s dream: a session with Mr. Jerkins, the New Jersey native who earned the nickname Super Producer with a litany of hits for Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé.
Dressed in jeans and a pale-blue printed T-shirt, Ms. Bermudez hugged Mr. Jerkins, who wore a white shirt, sneakers and a blinding array of bling. She’d never planned to be a pop singer, she told him. “But everyone I met in L.A. kept asking me, ‘Do you sing?’ ” she said. “And I was like, if Paris Hilton is making records, I’m not going to tell them no.”
At Mr. Jerkins’s coaxing, she sang a verse or two of a Marc Anthony favorite. It was an untrained voice, to be sure, but Mr. Jerkins thought he heard something.
“You should do it,” he said. “But not big ballads. Your songs need to be light, fun, urban, reggaetón, some catchphrase stuff — that’s really where you need to be.” At 8:30 p.m., Ms. Bermudez’s best friend, Adrienne Bailon, a petite pop singer in the girl group 3LW and one of the stars of the “Cheetah Girls” films on the Disney Channel, arrived with a flourish.
“Oh, my God, you guys, I was in Jersey at the ghetto-est wedding ever!” she said.
The women met at a Grammy Awards afterparty a few years ago and immediately clicked, in part because of their working-class Latina backgrounds (Ms. Bailon is of Puerto Rican and Ecuadorean descent and grew up on the Lower East Side). “She’s the only girl in the industry I know who doesn’t act so ‘industry,’ ” Ms. Bermudez said. “We’re both totally ‘Holly-hood.’ ”
The women parted ways with Mr. Jerkins, and by 9:40, had arrived at the Chinatown Brasserie on Lafayette Street. Ms. Bermudez mentioned that she would be riding on a float in the Dominican Day Parade the next afternoon.
Ms. Bailon offered some tutelage in Disneyland Waving 101. “I got this from Cinderella,” she said. “They teach them to wave a certain way. It’s ‘Wash the window, wash the window, missed a spot.’ ”
Ms. Bermudez rolled her eyes. Too scripted. A big part of being “Holly-hood” was keeping it real. Her won-ton soup offered a case in point.
“You know the difference between your nice upscale Chinese restaurant and your round-the-way ghetto Chinese?” she asked. “The soup here is good but, to be honest, I miss that package of greasy fried noodles.”
At least her fortune cookie brought satisfaction.
“Check this out,” Ms. Bermudez said to Ms. Bailon. “ ‘You are a hop, skip and jump away from good luck. So hop away.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/fashion/20nite.html?ex=1313726400&en=893b30651668981e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Posted by julissabet 
Posted by julissabet 
Just when I was starting to get used to seeing Julissa and Tigger on “106 and Park” BET goes and switches it up again. I actually started liking the Julissa/Tigger match up. But they have finally found permanent Free and AJ replacements but I’m not really feeling the new duo. I know it’s still too early to make a final decision but right now, in my opinion, 
Posted by julissabet 
