When your parents are famous, it's always difficult to escape their shadow. But if your father is legendary NFL star Jerry Rice, it's even tougher to distance yourself from his celebrity. Qui, Rice's daughter, has found a happy medium between completely fleeing the nest and depending on here pop's fame to launch her professional singing career. Instead of toting herself as the next Rice to take bat, Qui is handling her business by excluding Rice from her stage name and taking complete control of her career - even if she is signed to her parents' label JJR Entertainment.
Qui is in the process of recording her first album, Luv 'N Life, the title taken from a Smokey Robinson quote (he once said that he likes to write about love and life because "it's always current"). And considering that Qui is still a student at Georgetown University (she's got a 4.0 GPA!), she has plenty of personal stories about relationships and life as a young female that inspire her songs. Her first single "Rev It Up," featuring Mississippi rapper David Banner, is just one of the tracks influenced by her personal life and providing a small window of insight into how the rest of the album will take shape.
"Rev It Up" was written while Qui was driving in the car, but she looked to non-auto sources of inspiration for her other tracks. "Girl Child," drawn from an article she read about women in the Middle East, is intended to motivate women, while her double major in politics and Spanish are finding their way into other songs on the album. She hopes to get R&B powerhouse Ne-Yo to pen a track for the record, but in the meantime is keeping on by juggling her day job as a student and night job as a performer.
Taking time out of her busy schedule, Qui hopped on the phone to talk with Senior Music Editor Steven about her double life. Listen below to hear Qui talk about her experience as the 81st Queen of The Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, what her roommates think when she comes home after a day in the studio with David Banner and how her father lets her do her own thing - well, almost all on her own.
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