As Christina Milian sat in the room, a wave of exasperation washed over her.
It was the early 2000s and the Cuban American singer and actress’s cool was fraying.
She had inked a record deal off the popularity of a hit song with US rapper JaRule and was ready to record her debut album of R&B. Yet, she’d been boxed into pop music.
For the artist once compared to Beyonce, the resentment shifted from simmer to boil.
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Before Milian became a pop star, her sights were set on a career in acting.
Born in New Jersey, Milian spent her early years in Maryland with her parents, Carmen and Don. She was just nine when she made her TV debut – a commercial for popular US fast-food chain, Wendy’s.
“I was very imaginative and very creative entertaining myself,” she told the Associated Press in 2004.
“Television, listening to the radio, that’s what became my life. It inspired me to have fun, and it seemed like so much fun watching it, so I would try to convince my parents that I wanted to be inside the TV. It took some time to convince them.”
By the early 1990s, her mother reportedly uprooted Milian, then 13, and her two younger sisters and moved to Los Angeles so Milian could try her luck in Hollywood.
“When I moved to Los Angeles around 10 years ago, it was only to be an actress. I always wanted to be in the record business, but I didn’t know how to get a deal,” she said in an interview with US rapper Lil’ Kim in 2005.
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“You would hear those stories about how people got discovered, but never anything about how you really get into it. It’s crazy. People really do come up to you and ask, ‘Can you sing?'”
Milian was one of those stories. Six months after she moved to LA, American rapper and record producer, Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins, wanted to meet.
“[He] heard about me from one of the guys in this boy group he was working with. So I sang for him, and we started working together,” she said.
“For, like, a year and a half, I would go into the studio every day and watch him work with all these people – and, in time, the artists he was working with became people like Brandy and Destiny’s Child. That’s how I started meeting people in the record business.”
Milian found the road to success tough going. Many obstacles were put in her way.
“I started writing music when I was 17 years old, because I needed a demo to help me get a record deal,” she told Instinct Magazine in 2006.
“Every time I recorded a song, [the producer] wouldn’t give me the demo, or they would write lyrics that I didn’t agree with or a song I didn’t like.
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“So I just had to take it upon myself to write a song on my own demo and send it out.”
Her mother and manager, Carmen, did her best to keep her daughter on track.
“Christine is what you could call a happy-go-lucky person,” she told the LA Times in 2005.
“If she ever complained about working, even as a young child, I would always remind her, if she’s complaining it’s because she’s actually doing it and she’s lucky she has a job. There are people that would be begging to do what she’s doing now.”
Her first big break came in 2000 when she sang on rapper Ja Rule’s song Between Me and You. It was a hit and led to Milian signing a deal with Def Soul Records.
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Her self-titled debut album was set for release in 2001. Fate stepped in again.
The album, which contained the pop-soaked debut single, AM to PM, was supposed to be released in late September 2001.
However, the tragedy of the September 11 attacks on America saw it pushed back. It was now a waiting game.
At the same time, the music landscape was changing. Listeners were shifting away from pop with rock and hip-hop hits climbing the charts.
With little else to do, Milian headed back into the studio to work on new music.
It was ultimately decided her debut album would not be released in the US. It was given an international release instead. Milian headed off on tour to promote it.
“At first it was exciting, just because I thought I was building a fan base overseas. But eventually it was like promotion was going on forever, and I was never able to come back,” she told Instinct Magazine.
“I have two younger sisters who I’m close with, and they were growing up and I wasn’t around them. And then I’m watching other girls come out before me and I’m doing the same kind of music.
“That was a little bit frustrating because I knew the label was holding me back from my opportunity over here in the States.”
Milian took control.
“When I finally realised how unhappy I was and that they weren’t listening, I cussed them all out – and I gained their respect by doing that,” Milian told the LA Times in 2005.
“I had to explain to them, ‘Do you know how serious I am about my career? This is not a joke to me. You’re embarrassing me right now.'”
Amid the uncertainty surrounding her music career, Milian returned to acting.
In 2003 she was cast in the starring role in the comedy Love Don’t Cost a Thing opposite Nick Cannon. Milian and Cannon dated for two years before splitting in 2005.
She then booked a supporting role in the 2004 action film Torque. She released her second studio album It’s About Time that same year.
The album sold more than 360,000 copies. The single Dip It Low earned Milian a Grammy nomination. She’s been nominated for the prestigious music award twice.
She returned to the big screen in 2005 in the comedy Be Cool, starring Hollywood icon John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
The then 23-year-old played the role of Linda Moon, a young aspiring songstress who Travolta’s character takes under his wings on a path to stardom.
In a strange twist of reality, Milian’s role as Moon was mirroring her real life.
In May 2006, Milian released her third studio album So Amazin’. Sadly, she was dropped from her record label soon after, reportedly over poor sales.
“It was embarrassing. It was a week after my album got put out. I would be in my room a lot of the time crying by myself,” she told Rap-Up magazine.
Milian bounced back. In 2008 she signed a deal with MySpace Records.
As she tells it, a music icon played a part in her music comeback.
“I bumped into Janet Jackson at a club. We talked for an hour and I was telling her, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna do this’, and she was like, ‘Girl, do not let them stop you. I’m a fan and you make good music,'” Milian said.
“She’s a person I actually looked up to growing up, so her telling me that really was the day I was like, ‘I’m not gonna let these people hold me down. It’s time’.”
Milian planned to release her fourth studio album Elope in 2009. However, it was ultimately shelved while she focused on her personal life.
That same year the singer married US producer Terius “The-Dream” Nash. They welcomed a daughter, Violet Madison, together before separating and divorcing in 2011.
Milian continued making music following the split.
She worked on projects with US rapper Lil Wayne. The pair reportedly started dating in 2015 and split up after about a year together.
In 2014 Milian appeared in the music video for Zendaya’s single My Baby.
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Milian’s acting work continued on a steady stream. In 2009 she booked a recurring role as the voice of Esther on Family Guy.
In 2015 the TV show Grandfathered aired starring John Stamos. Milian was cast in the role of Vanessa. The series ran for 22 episodes.
Two years later, the star’s life took yet another turn when she had a chance encounter with French pop star Matt Pokora in Paris.
They first met at a restaurant in France, after being introduced by the manager.
They swapped numbers, with Pokora telling Milian he had a feeling they would have a family together one day.
”He told me, ‘We’re going to have a child together.’ … I’ve never had anybody say that to me,” she told E! News’s Daily Pop.
Milian told him she already had a daughter.
“He said, ‘Well, you don’t have a son’,” she shared.
The couple were married in 2020. They have two children, both sons, together.
They live together with Violet Madison in Paris.
“For the last three or four years, we were commuting back and forth every six months,” Christina explained on the Nov. 5 episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show.
“And then we decided to commit to it last year because our kids were gonna go to school.”
In 2022 she joined the cast of Step Up: High Water. She replaced Glee actress Naya Rivera who sadly drowned in 2020.
In recent years, she has worked on a number of Christmas films, including this year’s Netflix film Meet Me Next Christmas.
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