Remember in the 90s when our clubland divas Martha Wash and Loleatta Hollaway were being sampled by producers without receiving proper credit? Add Heather Leigh West to the list. Heather recorded the vocals to the underground club classic "Drop a House" by Urban Discharge, which was sampled by The Tamperer to become the pop/dance smash "Feel It." Not only has Heather "Set the Stakes High" with Da Hool, she is setting the record straight in this exclusive interview about her musical work over the years and her new project Wet which is buzzing among the NYC electro scene.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: So let's just start at the beginning, you sang the vocals
for "Drop A House" by Urban Discharge?
Heather Leigh West: I did, back in 1994.
RS: How did you get involved with that project?
Heather Leigh West: A friend was bartending with one of the two
writers and she knew that I was a vocalist and he needed a vocalist
for the song. Somebody else recorded it but had walked away from the
project, so they decided to have someone re-do it. They gave me the
version that this person sang and I learned it from that version.
Then they brought me in to Smash Studios and I rerecorded it there.
RS: The track became an underground club hit and charted on the
Billboard Club chart. Did you tour behind that record at all?
Heather Leigh West: Very minimally, very minimally. I did a couple
of times right at the very beginning and then after that they sort of
took it on its own way and that was pretty much it. At the time I
was singing love songs, I had never done dance music before and
certainly I wasn't singing anything about a bitch. This was back in
1994 and I really didn't think that I wanted to say that to the world.
So I was a little apprehensive about putting my name on something so
aggressive. So they saw my concern and they suggested that I record
it as 'She.' I didn't realize because I was young and naïve that they
were trying to find a way to make "she" interchangeable. They
changed vocalists, the next person was also flaky, and so on and so forth. So I
didn't realize A, that it was going to be a huge hit and B, that by
not putting my name on it that I would therefore have to prove for the
rest of my life that it was me. I didn't know the problem was going to
be so big. Who knows what's going to hit and what's not going to hit?
RS: Which bring us forward to the Tamperer, when did you first
hear that version of the song?
Heather Leigh West: I was living in Los Angeles in 1998 and they
didn't play it on the radio there but my friends in New York said they
heard my voice on KTU. They said that the station was saying somebody
else's name, but it's definitely your voice. I was not willing to say
that it was my voice until I heard it for myself, because I don't
know. Then finally one of my friends brought me a compilation with
the "Feel It" version on there and as soon as I heard it I knew it was
me. I have a very distinctive sound and a person knows their own
voice. Once I heard it then I knew absolutely that there was no doubt
that it was the same vocal that I had done for Drop A House, just that
they had sped it up or thrown some effects on it to make it sound a
little different. There's a tone and a quality to the sound of my
voice - some people like it, some people don't like it, but it's
definitely me. Then I saw the video and boy, let me tell you, that
was a heart attack. I was by myself and I was watching TV at my mom's
house, and all of a sudden there's this skinny, black girl opens her
mouth and out comes my voice. It was a heart attack. I didn't even
know what to do with myself. I was beside myself. That was the most
surreal moment I think of my life. It's crazy.
