Sylvia Striplin (born 1st March 1954) is a New York based jazz, soul and R&B vocalist. Sylvia was the youngest of five children. After a fire destroyed their home on Sugarhill in Harlem, the family moved to the North Bronx in New York—there Sylvia honed her craft. Sylvia loved singing. She made up songs on the family piano and sang them around the house. She took piano lessons during her grade school years and performed in recitals. She began singing professionally with neighborhood friends, Gus Falcon and Malcolm Ballinger as a teenager. After high school, Sylvia attended City College in Harlem where she was praised for her performance in the College's production of Anything Goes. During the 1970s, Sylvia found work as a backup singer. In the late 70s she auditioned for the role of Dorothy in The Wiz and was selected as the second understudy with the New York Company. She was eventually selected to play Dorothy in the road company production, traveling to Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities, receiving excellent reviews along the way.
During the late 1970s, Sylvia became a member of Aquarian Dream and worked with funk, jazz, R&B and soul, vibraphonist Roy Ayers, in his group Ladies of the Eighties, recording one album with each group. Ayers signed Sylvia to his Uno Melodic record label.[1] where she recorded an album with him, an extended single of her own - Give Me Your Love, then her first solo album of the same name Give Me Your Love
Her song, "You Can't Turn Me Away" the flip side of her single and a track on her solo album was featured on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, playing on quiet storm station VCFL. It was also in the romantic comedy film Prime and the mini-film Ecology of Love with Pharrell Williams. This song also serves as the basis for the Notorious B.I.G/Junior M.A.F.I.A.hit, "Get Money" on BigBeat Records, subsidiary of Atlantic. BigBeat label chief Craig Kallman is the judge in the video for this song which then received numerous awards. Erykah Badu also covered this song for her 2010 track "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)" on the album New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh). "Give Me Your Love" was sampled by Armand Van Helden in "Full Moon" (ft. Common).
Soon after the release of her follow up single, Keep Pushing[2] the illness Sylvia endured slowly consumed her, keeping her out of the spotlight and preventing her from achieving her full potential. Her musical genius has been, and continues to be recognized by a wide array of musicians who have covered, sampled, and mashed up her tracks, giving her sound classic status.
Discography
- Give Me Your Love (Uno Melodic Records, 1981)
- Keep Pushing (Rissa Crissa, 1982)