LOS ANGELES -- Two pairs of Gucci shoes are on a table next to Deborah Cox, as she sits in her Beverly Hills Hotel suite, awaiting a dinner party. The plush suite and the expensive shoes signal that Cox may be on her way to diva status, but that image evaporates once this Toronto-bred singer -- the first Canadian R&B artist ever to reach stardom -- begins to reveal her true personality.
Cox, 25, has refined tastes -- and shares the same record label (Arista Records) as diva queen Whitney Houston -- but please don't use the D word around her."I'm not," Cox says firmly, but not rudely, to the diva question. "I'm really a settled, down-to-earth person. I treat people the way I like to be treated, and that's just with respect. I've always been very down-to-earth and not fazed by the music business, or by what other people do. I just walk my own path."
Walk her own path?
A better word is "running," for that's been the pace of Cox's career in the past several months. She just made history with the longest-running No. 1 R&B hit of all time -- 14 weeks at the top with "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," an impassioned, gospel-edged tune about a rejuvenated romance. The song also hit No. 2 on the pop charts -- and was kept from No. 1 only by the R. Kelly/Celine Dion duet during Christmas, "I'm Your Angel."
Kelly and Celine, coincidentally, have played pivotal roles in her life. Kelly is taking her out as his opening act on a tour that stops at the FleetCenter May 7, and Dion once gave Cox a job as her backup singer.
Cox, if you can't tell by now, is going places.
"Deborah is a natural," says Arista president Clive Davis, who has advised numerous hit singers in his tenure. "She's got soul, beauty, and a roaring, powerful voice. The time for her is right now."
Davis has a vested commercial interest in Cox, but he's also taking an abiding personal interest. "He just wants me to have the best," says Cox. "It's kind of like a parent -- and Clive has really been that for me. A lot of times I'll see myself a certain way, but Clive, because he's been in the business for so long and has groomed superstars, knows the right steps to take. So I just sit back and learn."
Cox's real parents were both Guyanese. Her mother remarried and her stepdad was Canadian. Cox grew up in the suburban town of Scarborough and attended the Claude Watson School for the Arts in Toronto. But her vocal influences are mostly non-Canadian: "Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, and Aretha Franklin," she says.
As a child, Cox was surrounded by many forms of music, but she had to hunt to find R&B. "In Toronto, I didn't hear a lot of R&B," she adds. "There aren't any R&B stations in Canada."
Luckily, she learned from her parents' records.
"That was my first dose of black music. I heard jazz, reggae and R&B from my parents' records," she says. "I also went to a Catholic primary school and during those years from grade two to grade eight, I did talent shows and joined local bands. I started singing with bands when I was 12 and singing commercial jingles when I was 14. That gave me a lot of experience.
"There were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way," she adds. "When I was 15, I went to a performing-arts high school. It was during that time that I met a songwriter/producer, Lascelles Stephens, and the two of us wrote songs and put our ideas on tape and sent them to different record companies. Then in 1993, I got the attention of Clive Davis . . . I moved to L.A. in 1994 and put out my first album in 1995."