Tracy Chapman, born on March 30, 1964, is an American singer and songwriter. Chapman is best known for her hit singles “Fast Car” (1988) and “Give Me One Reason” (1995). She was signed to Elektra Records by Bob Krasnow in 1987.
Profile Summary
| Name: | Tracy Chapman |
| Date of Birth: | March 30, 1964 |
| Place of Birth: | Cleveland, Ohio |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Singer and Songwriter |
| Net Worth: | $5 millions |
| Husband: | Married |
Early Life and Education
Chapman was born on March 30, 1964, in Cleveland, Ohio. She was raised by her mother, who bought her a ukulele at age three. Her parents divorced when she was four years old.
She began playing guitar and writing songs at age eight. She says that she may have been first inspired to play the guitar by the television show Hee Haw. In her native Cleveland she experienced frequent bullying and racially motivated assaults as a child.
Raised a Baptist, she attended an Episcopal high school[5] and was accepted into the program A Better Chance, which sponsors students at college preparatory high schools away from their home communities. She graduated from Wooster School in Connecticut then attended Tufts University, majoring in Anthropology.
While a student at Tufts, she busked in nearby spots, including Harvard Square and on MBTA Red Line platforms. Chapman recorded demos of songs on the Tufts University radio station, WMFO, while she was a student there for copyright purposes, in exchange for the station’s right to play her songs.
Career
Chapman made her major-stage debut as an opening act for women’s music pioneer Linda Tillery at Boston’s Strand Theatre on May 3, 1985.
Another Tufts student, Brian Koppelman, heard her playing and brought her to the attention of his father, Charles Koppelman, showing him a demo tape he had smuggled from her college radio station containing the song “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution”.
Koppelman, who ran SBK Publishing, signed her in 1986. After she graduated from Tufts in 1987, he helped her to sign a contract with Elektra Records.
At Elektra, she released Tracy Chapman (1988). The album was critically acclaimed, and she began touring and building a fanbase. “Fast Car” began its rise on the U.S. charts soon after she performed it at the televised Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert at Wembley Stadium, London, in June 1988.
At the concert, she initially performed a short set in the afternoon, but reached a larger audience when she was a last-minute stand-in for Stevie Wonder, who had technical difficulties. This appearance is credited with greatly accelerating sales of the single and album.
“Fast Car” became a No. 6 pop hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending August 27, 1988. Rolling Stone ranked the song No. 167 on their 2010 list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution”, the follow-up to “Fast Car”, charted at No. 75 and was followed by “Baby Can I Hold You”, which peaked at No. 48.
The album sold well, going multi-platinum and winning three Grammy Awards, including an honour for her as Best New Artist. Later in 1988 she was a featured performer on the worldwide Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour.
Her follow-up album, Crossroads (1989), was less commercially successful than her debut had been, but it still achieved platinum status in the U.S. In 1992 she released Matters of the Heart. Her fourth album, New Beginning (1995), proved successful, selling over five million copies in the U.S. alone.
The album included the hit single “Give Me One Reason”, which won the 1997 Grammy for Best Rock Song and became her most successful single in the U.S. to date, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and going Platinum. Following a four-year hiatus, her fifth album, Telling Stories, was released in 2000, and later went gold. She released her sixth album, Let It Rain, in (2002).
She was commissioned by the American Conservatory Theater to compose music for its production of Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot, a play about apartheid in South Africa, staged in early 2008.
Atlantic Records released her eighth studio album, Our Bright Future (2008). The album earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album the following year.
She was appointed a member of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary jury. She performed with Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” on one of the final episodes of the Late Show with David Letterman in April 2015. The performance became a viral hit and was the focus of various news articles including some by Billboard and The Huffington Post.
On November 20, 2015, she released Greatest Hits, consisting of 18 tracks including the live version of “Stand by Me”. The album is her first global compilation release.
In October 2018, she sued the rapper Nicki Minaj over copyright infringement, alleging that Minaj had sampled her song “Baby Can I Hold You” without permission. Chapman stated that she had “repeatedly denied” permission for “Baby Can I Hold You” to be sampled.
The lawsuit alleged that Minaj had engaged in copyright infringement (a) by creating the song “Sorry” and (b) by distributing it; she requested an injunction to prevent Minaj from releasing the song.
According to the lawsuit, Chapman has a policy of declining all requests for permission to sample her songs. In September 2020, District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips granted summary judgement in favour of Minaj on the first count of her complaint, stating that Minaj’s experimentation with Chapman’s song constituted fair use rather than copyright infringement.
However, the judge ruled that the second count of the complaint should go to trial. In January 2021, the dispute was settled when Minaj paid Chapman $450,000.
On the eve of the 2020 United States presidential election she performed “Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution” on Late Night with Seth Meyers, encouraging people to vote.
When Luke Combs’ version of her song “Fast Car” hit number one on the Country Airplay chart in July 2023, she became the first Black woman to score a country number one with a solo composition.
At the 57th Annual Country Music Association Awards in November 2023, Chapman became the first Black woman to ever take home a CMA Award, winning Song of the Year for “Fast Car”, which also made her the first Black songwriter to ever win that award. During the 2024 Grammy Awards, she joined Combs onstage to co-sing “Fast Car”.
Tracy Chapman Net worth
Tracy Chapman has an estimated net worth of $5 millions. Tracy Chapman is an American singer and songwriter.
Personal Life
However, Chapman has never publicly discussed her sexual orientation, writer Alice Walker has stated that she and Chapman were in a romantic relationship during the mid-1990s.
Chapman maintains a strong separation between her personal and professional life. “I have a public life that’s my work life and I have my personal life”, she said. “In some ways, the decision to keep the two things separate relates to the work I do.”
