“I put a video on YouTube just to see what people would say — besides my mom or my friends, because they [might] tell you you can sing but you probably can’t. I wanted to get that honest opinion on YouTube. A year later I had 25 videos up, people were coming out [from] everywhere trying to sign me or collaborate with me [and] one of those people was [Jermaine Dupri].”

The So So Def boss flew her and her mother out Atlanta to start work — but it took a couple of months to convince Dondria he was actually JD.

“First, he tried to reach me over YouTube, but I never got that message. Then he went over to MySpace, and at first I didn’t think it was him, so I was kind of ignoring him. ‘Don’t play with me, I’m smarter than that,’ ” Dondria replied.

“But it was really him. I’m so mad — like, what if he had stopped writing me. I wouldn’t be here,” she offered. “I finally responded and realized that it was really him, and ever since then I’ve bugged him like, everyday. ‘Let’s work, like, right now! Let’s get it done!’ ”

Dupri worked her tirelessly in hopes of bringing out her best and gave her the chance to work with the likes of Johnta Austin and No I.D., learn about the recording process and discover her own sound. Her debut album, Dondria vs. Phatfffat, is expected to be released in June. However, despite the title’s implications, the album isn’t a fight between personalities.

“It’s not really an alter-ego thing — it’s really kind of explaining to everbody that I could be more than Phatfffat that you saw on YouTube that was singing other people’s songs, forgetting words and eating pizza. Dondria, she’s singing her own music. She’s proving to everybody that she can be an artist and not just a person on YouTube.”

By Shaheem Reid

Jermaine Dupri has been DJing for decades, but over the past few years, he’s decided to go public with his love for the turntables. His ’80s vs. ’90s DJ battles at Atlanta club Studio 72 always have the crowd moving, and for the past several months, party promoters have been booking JD to keep their dance floors packed.

“DJing, I’m really trying to make people understand what I actually do,” Dupri said last week via phone from Atlanta. “I don’t think people take DJing seriously, like how they take a drummer seriously or playing guitar seriously. When you see Lil Wayne with the guitar, he’s really one to play guitar. He plays it, and he’s getting better and better. He really wants everyone to know he plays guitar. I’ve been DJing all my life. It’s always been something I’ve kept secret. It’s always been a gift I had, and I never revealed it to anybody.”
Over the weekend, Jermaine DJed for the crowd at a Weezer concert in Tallahassee, Florida. Later in the night, Dupri jumped onstage with the fellas; Dupri wrote the group’s “Can’t Stop Partying.” He was playing around with his rock side, and it turned into something solid.
“Me and Rivers hooked up,” he said of working with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. “I sent them a song. … This was a project that opened me to say, ‘Jermaine, show people more of the other side of what you do.’ I wrote songs, and I throw them songs away. I wrote so many records in the past, and I threw them away. Because I don’t have any artists to give them to and they don’t sound like none of my artists. I’ll be like, ‘I don’t know about this.’
“So I went in there one night drunk in the studio, and I made a rock record where I was playing the drums and singing this melody and I tracked it,” he continued. “I said, ‘This song would sound crazy if somebody took me seriously.’ So I sent it to Weezer. I ain’t know these guys or nothing. They hit me back and said, ‘We love this song. We want to cut it.’ I said, ‘What? Get the f— outta here.’ I went to L.A. and met with Rivers, and we hit it off. They put my song on the album. That’s, like, a first. A whole new explosion for me. I was really geeked on that.”
Besides Usher’s new album — which he’s pretty much wrapped up — Dupri said he’s not focusing on any other projects outside of his So So Def roster. Those projects include albums from Dondria, who has the single “You’re the One,” and songwriter/producer Johntá Austin, whose new LP Love Sex Religion is dropping soon. Dupri is also inking newcomer Brandon Hines.