Diva Divo - Ultra Naté

Ask any dance artist about the genre’s problems, and they’re likely to point to a few things: lack of radio support, declining album sales, and an American audience that is generally unreceptive to electronic music. But to Ultra Nate, one of the biggest diva legends in the business, the real problem is something far different: “There’s still a bit of segregation in the party scene,” she tells me. “White gay people want to dance with white gay people… black gay people want to party with black gay people… black straight kids with black straight kids… white straight kids with…”

Point taken.

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to be!” she says of the splintered dance scene.

If music really is what makes the people come together (the bourgousie and the rebel, yeah) then Ultra Nate plans to lead the way. She’s spent the last five years working on her latest album, Grime, Silk & Thunder, to be released on May 22. And for the past three and a half years, she’s hosted her own club night, SUGAR, in her native Baltimore. For this former pre-med student turned successful club diva, SUGAR is the antidote to the dance world’s discriminatory disease: “I remember the first time I walked into a club… how I felt and how it changed the course of my life,” she says. “I want to be able to possibly provide that same situation and have that kind of effect on someone else: where they walk in there, and they feel such liberation and freedom that they can dance with total abandon. They might be dancing next to a white gay person, or a white straight person, an old person, a young kid… whomever. SUGAR is a complete melting pot. On any given night there’s representation of any kind of person.”

Including the famous kind: Jody Watley, Jocelyn Brown, Crystal Waters and DJ Louie Vega have all paid visits. “It’s grown so much, and the word has really gotten out about it globally,” she says of her sweet SUGAR labor. “There’s been a really good reception to it.”

There’s also been a good reception to Ultra’s other current effort: Grime, Silk & Thunder. The album’s first single, “Love’s the Only Drug,” stormed to the #2 position on the Billboard Club Play charts, and the follow-up “Automatic” is without doubt one of the best dance-pop confections of recent years. Like SUGAR, Grime is an exercise in musical diversity: “I wouldn’t be happy in a structured, regimented genre like R&B,” Ultra says. Instead, she prefers dance music’s ability to encompass a wide field of artistic choice: “Rock, gospel, R&B… in the dance genre I can do ALL of those things. I can have tracks that lean towards all those various styles, because I love and appreciate all those styles. You’ll hear rock leaning stuff, pop, dance, jazz, neo-soul… elements of all of that.”

And why not? Even before she reached the heights of dance music success, Ultra’s musical influences were as varied as can be: “My claim to fame was burying myself in my room as a teenager, hiding from the world, and going from radio station to radio station,” she says. “From Madonna to James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Patti Labelle, Chic…”

That teenage girl alone in her room would eventually discover a different kind of music: vocal house. “When I graduated from high school I started going to the clubs,” she says. “I fell in love with nightlife and became the consummate club kid. I’d be out 3 or 4 nights a week until 6 or 7 in the morning. I really fell in love with the whole energy and vibe, the mix of people.”

And the people fell in love with her: specifically, Tommy Davis from production team The Basement Boys, who first approached Ultra about working as a vocalist. Previously on track for a career in medicine, Ultra had never considered music as a way of life: “I sang a little bit in church, but I wasn’t a vocalist,” she recalls. “I did choir stuff in the background, and I was cool with that. I had really deep voice and it was kind of weird sounding to me. I could carry a tune… but I never considered myself a singer, per se.”

But Warner Brothers Records did. After her first few stabs at singing and songwriting, Ultra was signed to Warner UK. Nearly twenty years later, she’s unleashed a string of mammoth dance hits: “Free,” “Found a Cure,” “Desire,” “Get it Up (The Feeling)” and “If You Could Read My Mind” with fellow divas Amber and Jocelyn Enriquez.