Mila Jam | |
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 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | February 22, 1989 Aurora, Illinois |
Jahmila Adderley, known professionally as Mila Jam, [1] is an American transgender singer, [2] [3] songwriter, dancer, actress, [4] and LGBTQ activist. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Mila Jam | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Background information | |
| Born | February 22, 1989 Aurora, Illinois |
Jahmila Adderley, known professionally as Mila Jam, [1] is an American transgender singer, [2] [3] songwriter, dancer, actress, [4] and LGBTQ activist. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Jam was born in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, Illinois on February 22, 1989. She was raised in Columbus, Georgia, by her mother, Stephanie Adderley, an IT technician, and Phillip Adderley, a lab technician at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. She attended Columbus High School. Before continuing her career in New York City at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, she performed in several national stage productions and television commercials. [9]
Mila Jam performed as the popular YouTube impersonator Britney Houston. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] She was known for creating parodies of popular videos and posting them on YouTube within days of the original videos' releases. She began creating her parodies while in the national touring company of Rent . [15]
Several of her parodies have over a million hits, with her parody of Rihanna's song "Umbrella" having over two million. [16] For her parody of the Pussycat Dolls' song "When I Grow Up", Jam recruited four drag queens to serve as the "Britney Cat Dolls". [17] She choreographed and starred in the 2008 MTV original television pilot Newsical, which was not picked up. [18]
Jam has appeared on BBC Three's Lily Allen and Friends , MTV, and MTV News. She has also hosted episodes of the YouTube talk show I’m From Driftwood. [12]
Jam recorded the song "And the Crowd Goes", which was written and produced by Jonny McGovern and released on his compilation, The East Village Mixtape 2: The Legends Ball. [15] The song also features New York rapper Jipsta. [19] Jam has performed alongside James Brown, Mark Ronson, Laverne Cox, Travis Wall, Jody Watley, Lady Kier of Deee-Lite, and Natasha Bedingfield.[ citation needed ]
The music video for Jam's song "Faces" was released to coincide with International Transgender Day of Visibility and featured appearances by Laverne Cox, Tituss Burgess, Candis Cayne, Geena Rocero, Peppermint, Zackary Drucker, Trace Lysette, and Nathan Lee Graham. The song has been called an anthem for the LGBTQ movement and focuses on self-acceptance, inner beauty, and sense of belonging. [20] [21] [22] [23] Jam described the song as being "about looking in that mirror and hearing, 'Do I belong, am I enough, will someone love me for who I really am?' We wear smiles all the time but hide in fear and loathing because we feel different. The journey is universal no matter who you are." [24]
Mila was awarded Best Video and Dance Artist at the 2013 GLAM Nightlife Awards [25] and she was named Odyssey Nightlife Awards Breakthrough Artist in 2015 . [26]
"Me Against the Music" is a song by American singers Britney Spears and Madonna for Spears' fourth studio album, In the Zone (2003). It was written by Spears, Madonna, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, Thabiso "Tab" Nikhereanye, Penelope Magnet, Terius Nash and Gary O'Brien. The song was released on October 14, 2003, by Jive Records, as the lead single of In the Zone. After bonding with Spears during a night in New York City, Stewart and Magnet started working on the song for her. During rehearsals for the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, Spears played Madonna the track and asked her to do the song with her.
Christopher Niles Cox is an American dance music record producer, remixer, and DJ who has worked on over 600 records throughout his career. His album 12 Inches of Cox was released in 2002.
The Britney Spears doll is a celebrity doll made in the likeness of American pop singer Britney Spears. Several versions of the doll were released. Each doll is dressed in costumes that resemble the clothing Spears had worn in concerts, appearances, and music videos. The Britney Spears doll was the first doll produced by Play Along Toys.
Candis Cayne is an American actress and performance artist. Cayne performed in New York City nightclubs in drag since the 1990s, and came out as transgender in 1996; Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender mistress Carmelita on ABC's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in primetime. She is perhaps best known for her recurring role as the Fairy Queen on the fantasy series The Magicians.
Cara Cunningham is an American internet personality, songwriter, recording artist, YouTuber, and former pornographic film actress. As of October 2010, Cunningham's videos had received a combined 50 million plays on MySpace, and her vlog channel on YouTube was the 100th-most viewed of all time in all categories, with over 205 million video views, before Cunningham closed her YouTube account in September 2015. Her work consists mainly of short-form, self-directed monologues shot in her grandparents' home.
"Love in This Club" is a song by American R&B singer Usher. Featuring rapper Young Jeezy, it was released on February 22, 2008, as the lead single from Usher's fifth studio album, Here I Stand. The song was written by Usher, Polow da Don, Jeezy, Darnell Dalton, Ryon Lovett, Lamar Taylor and Keith Thomas, and produced by da Don, with a Las Vegas-inspired synth-driven beat. Its lyrics refer to seducing someone in a nightclub. The song was originally leaked by da Don prior to its release.
"When I Grow Up" is a song by American girl group the Pussycat Dolls from their second studio album Doll Domination (2008). It was released by Interscope Records on May 27, 2008, as the lead single from the album. It was first written for Britney Spears, but was rejected. It was then considered and recorded for Nicole Scherzinger's planned solo project, Her Name Is Nicole, but after its cancellation and Scherzinger's return to the group, she felt that the song was better suited for the group. "When I Grow Up" was written by Theron Thomas, Timothy Thomas, and Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, who also produced the song. It is an uptempo electropop and R&B song, sampling the 1966 song, "He's Always There" by British rock band The Yardbirds. "When I Grow Up" speaks about the desire to be famous, and was described as being "autobiographical" by Scherzinger.
LGBT representations in hip hop music have existed since the birth of the genre even while enduring blatant discrimination. Due to its adjacency to disco, the earliest days of hip hop had a close relation to LGBT subcultures, and multiple LGBT DJs have played a role in popularizing hip hop. Despite this early involvement, hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music, with a significant body of the genre containing homophobic views and anti-gay lyrics, with mainstream artists such as Eminem and Tyler, the Creator having used homophobia in their lyrics. Attitudes towards homosexuality in hip hop culture have historically been negative, with slang that uses homosexuality as a punchline such as "sus", "no homo", and "pause" being heard in hip hop lyrics from some of the industry's biggest artists. Since the early 2000s there has been a flourishing community of LGBTQ+ hip hop artists, activists, and performers breaking barriers in the mainstream music industry.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+(LGBTQ+)music is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.
Peppermint, or Miss Peppermint, is an American actress, singer, songwriter, television personality, drag queen, and activist. She is best known from the nightlife scene and, in 2017, as the runner-up on the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. In 2018, Peppermint made her debut in The Go-Go's-inspired musical Head Over Heels as Pythio, becoming Broadway's first out trans woman to originate a lead role.
Jazz Jennings is an American YouTube personality, spokesmodel, television personality, and LGBT rights activist. Jennings is one of the youngest publicly documented people to be identified as transgender. Jennings received national attention in 2007 when an interview with Barbara Walters aired on 20/20, which led to other high-profile interviews and appearances. Christine Connelly, a member of the board of directors for the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth, stated, "She was the first young person who picked up the national spotlight, went on TV and was able to articulate her perspective and point of view with such innocence." Her parents noted that Jennings was clear on being female as soon as she could speak.
Tiq Milan is an American writer, public speaker, activist, and strategic media consultant. He is currently a national spokesperson for GLAAD and the former senior media strategist of national news at GLAAD. Prior to his current roles, he was a mentor and teacher at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an LGBTQ youth nonprofit organization in NYC. His advocacy, LGBTQ activism, and journalism has been recognized nationally.
John Patrick Masterson, known professionally as Jipsta, is an American rapper, songwriter, and music producer. Jipsta has released six studio albums: Bandoozle (2011), Turnt Up (2013), Ban2oozle (2017), "Swaggerific" (2019),"Year of the Tiger" (2021), and most recently "ORIGAMI"(2022). Jipsta's unique style of layering intricate lyrics over uptempo house music beats has resulted in seven consecutive appearances on the Billboard Dance Club Songs Chart since 2007 when his debut single "Don't Act Like You Don't Know" was released. Jipsta is also widely known for his genre-bending cover songs; the most popular of which is his cover version of "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael which reached No. 4 on the Billboard Dance Chart in 2009. Jipsta's notoriety increased significantly when he was asked to collaborate with RuPaul on the song "Sexy Drag Queen," which was heard regularly on the television program Rupaul's Drag Race. Jipsta is an openly gay man and has been in a relationship with his partner for nearly 20 years.
Amiyah Scott is an American actress, model, author, and dancer. She is known for her presence on social media apps such as Instagram, as a fixture in the LGBT ball community, and for her role as Cotton in the Fox television series Star (2016–2019). She also appeared in the eighth season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
In the United States, LGBT youth of colour are marginalized adolescents in the LGBT community. Social issues include homelessness; cyberbullying; physical, verbal and sexual abuse; suicide; drug addiction; street violence; immigration surveillance; engagement in high-risk sexual activity; self-harm, and depression. The rights of LGBT youth of colour are reportedly not addressed in discussions of sexuality and race in the larger context of LGBT rights.
Trace Lysette is an American actress whose most notable roles include Shea in the television series Transparent (2014–2019) and Tracey in the feature film Hustlers (2019). As a trans actress, she also featured in the Netflix documentary Disclosure as herself.
Yuhua Hamasaki is the stage name of Yuhua Ou, a Chinese-born American drag queen, singer, actor and reality television personality who came to international attention on the tenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race.
Brian Michael Smith is an American actor and LGBT advocate. He is known for playing Paul Strickland in 9-1-1: Lone Star.
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