b. LeToya Nicole Luckett, 11 March 1981, Houston, Texas, USA. One of the original members of the highly successful group Destiny’s Child, urban vocalist Luckett enjoyed commercial success of her own in 2006 with her debut album, a fitting conclusion to the chain of events that had seen her parting acrimoniously from her former group over five years previously.
Luckett, who was born and raised in Houston, had first begun performing with Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and LaTavia Roberson in 1993, but it was not until the quartet changed their name to Destiny’s Child and signed to Columbia Records that they began to make serious inroads into the charts. Luckett recorded two albums with Destiny’s Child, before being ousted alongside Roberson in 2000 after the duo had attempted to question the role of Beyoncé’s father as manager of the group. Luckett and Roberson formed a new group called Anjel but despite recording a number of demo tracks the project never went beyond the demo stage.
Luckett signed a solo recording contract with Capitol Records in 2004 and began work on a projected debut album. The promo singles ‘You Got What I Need’ and ‘All Eyes On Me’ received extensive radio play and helped raise the singer’s media profile, as did a guest appearance on the Slim Thug album Already Platinum (the pair were briefly an item). Luckett’s recording activities were chronicled on the What It Do! mixtape at the end of 2005. Her first official release, the single ‘Torn’, reached the R&B Top 3 and pop Top 40 in summer 2006. Her excellent self-titled debut album deservedly debuted at the top of the mainstream charts in August.
