b. Stacy Ann Ferguson, 27 March 1975, Hacienda Heights, California, USA. This US pop and R&B singer has enjoyed an eventful career in the entertainment industry. Born and raised in California, she found work as a child actress on the show Kids Incorporated. In her late teens Ferguson joined the dance pop trio Wild Orchid, whose line-up included fellow Kids Incorporated actress Renee Sandstrom. The trio enjoyed a number of club hits in the late 90s but the line-up sundered shortly after completing work on their third album. Ferguson’s life then went off the rails as she left the band and became addicted to crystal meth. She began to get her life back on track at the start of the new millennium, working as a session vocalist on a number of music and film projects. In 2003, Ferguson joined rap crew the Black Eyed Peas and was instrumental in their rise from critical darlings to major international hit machine, providing vocals on worldwide hits including ‘Shut Up’, ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’ and ‘My Humps’.
In summer 2006, at the peak of her popularity with the Black Eyed Peas, the singer launched her solo career with the US chart-topper ‘London Bridge’. The single mined a similar vein to the Black Eyed Peas hit ‘My Humps’, mixing a thumping dance pop beat, catchy chorus and explicit street slang in the lyrics, although the end result was oddly soulless. The same critique could also be applied to the full-length The Dutchess, although the album certainly proved popular and spawned further US hits with ‘Fergalicious’, ‘Glamorous’, and ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’, the latter two tracks both topping the charts. During the same period, Ferguson also relaunched her acting career with a role in the remake of The Poseidon Adventure.
