On any given day of the week, you will find Felicia Temple at the intersection where hustle meets talent. Being no stranger to the music industry, she has paved her way, creating a unique feel-good electro-R&B lane that is all her own. From fighting for a top spot on NBC’s The Voice to fighting cancer with six rounds of chemo, Felicia has proven her dedication to her artistry. Now, she’s allowing us a smallish glimpse of her extraordinary journey and the new musical offerings we can expect from her later this summer.
I want to jump into your music and everything you have coming up, but your journey is intriguing. Your father toured with The Sugar Hill Gang, so was that something that you got to be exposed to and involved with? Do you feel that guided your interest in music?
It’s interesting, my dad to this day still tours with The Sugar Hill Gang, but when I was younger, he was doing mostly all of his own music and touring with them on the side. So, my best exposure really came from watching my dad as a soulful house artist like me. My dad did Jersey House. I was exposed to going to the Winter Music Conference at 14-15 years old. I was hanging out with Barbara Tucker and Cici Pennington, and doing shows with them because I was singing background for my dad. That’s really where the exposure came from. The guys in Sugar Hill Gang are like my family, and I call them my uncles. I got to see them do some cool things, and it’s always interesting when people are like your family, and you go out to places and there are people that are so excited to meet them. You forget that they’re famous. I’m like “Uncle Mike? That’s what they’re excited about?” But they’re legends!
Now you’ve been an artist at heart, but you focused on a degree in nursing. What led to that? But also, what was that hustle like, beginning your career with healthcare, while simultaneously pursuing your career as a solo artist?
Well, my father, on top of being a musician, was a police officer. I watched him rearrange his schedule and make things happen so that he could gig and tour and do all these things. My father taught me at an incredibly young age, being talented actually has very little to do with whether you make it or not. He said, “You’re smart and you’re very talented, but the landlord doesn’t care about your dreams. So, you better have a skill or get a job, have something to pay your bills because you could be the most talented person on earth and that doesn’t mean you’ll ever get success. He said, “Please just get a degree and you can do whatever you want after that.” It was the best thing he ever told me.
I knew I wanted to do something in healthcare. I was always really good at science. At first, I thought about being a doctor and I was like that’ll just take too long and I really, really want to be singing. I figured nursing was the only job that I could work pretty much anywhere throughout the United States – really anywhere in the world if you apply for a license. I could make my own schedule; make a whole lot of money and I could still do what I love. Now these days, I’m 13 years in as a nurse. If you asked me, I would have told you I would have been gone doing music full time a long time ago but actually I love nursing. It’s become something that is a part of my identity. I have a few specialty board certifications in what I do, and I make great money doing it. It’s actually become not a Plan B, but it’s become a way to finance my plan A. I don’t have any management or any team, so everything you see is me. I pay for things with my nursing shift. It’s actually been a means to an end, a really helpful one.
You’ve also been on The Voice. Do you think that competitive atmosphere rolled into your drive now?
I wouldn’t even say it was a competitive atmosphere at The Voice. You’re in a room full of people that are just as talented as you are. I think the interesting thing about doing reality TV is… You’re probably the best at what you do in your town. People know you and singing is your superpower and then you get to these TV shows, and it doesn’t matter at all. You almost feel like you’re in a twilight zone because you’re singing against people and they know and you know, like they’ll even say to you, “how did I win that? It’s impossible! I know you sang better than me.” But that’s not the way it works. It’s actually not the point of the show at all. Their point is to make good TV. Everyone there is talented. It’s about making a good show. They want to win their Emmy’s and they did win an Emmy for my season. I think if anything, it taught me a little bit more about Hollywood and the entertainment industry and really knowing who you are because you don’t leave these shows with anything more than what you came in the door with. They’re not going to give you anything. They’re not going to hand you anything. They open you up to a new audience and it’s your job to retain that audience.
I don’t want to make this a main point, but you did go through six rounds of chemotherapy before you dove back into launching your music career. What got you through that and where did you find the strength?
I took some time off when I got diagnosed with cancer because I didn’t have a choice. I had my abdomen cut open, and I had major surgery and then chemo makes you weak. Music is very cathartic for me. It’s therapeutic for me and while I couldn’t do anything else a lot of times, that would keep me from vomiting because I was really nauseas. I would just sit and write songs and hum. The Balancing Act, which was the project I put out in 2017, was the first project that I put out post cancer. That was pretty much like a journal about what I was going through. It was a very weird time for me. I was trying to figure out how to balance being a nurse, being a singer, and wondering if it was ever going to really happen for me. I had met this new guy like I really liked, who is now my husband and trying to figure out how I was supposed to balance being sick and still trying to make it in this industry. There was so much going on. So, the music is actually what got me through.
So now you’re ready and releasing music. “Wonder Bout My Love” bumps and that was just released. How do you feel about the feedback?
I am so pleasantly surprised. The good thing about being indie is you can release anything that you want, but also your audience gets used to the type of things you put out. I’m really known for slow sexy R&B ballads, not anything that you could remotely do a two-step to. So, this is a new venture for me but also a lot of people don’t realize it’s me going back to my roots of what I grew up watching my dad doing, which was soulful house. So, this entire project that I’m about to release is going back to those jersey house roots. People say, “Oh my God, I love this sound from you! This is a new lane. I don’t hear anybody else making music that sounds like this!” And I love that! I call it Electro-R&B fusion because to me, it’s not exactly house or your traditional soulful house but it’s not your traditional R&B.
You also have three other EPs out now. Is there an album in the works?
I think I will continue to put out EPs until the cows come home. I feel like until I build an audience and I’m able to really tour nationally, to me it would be silly to put out an album. It seems really kind of petty. I would really hate to be the person that you meet randomly at Walmart, and I say like, “Hey I do music. I have two albums out!” and you don’t even know who I am. There’s something very icky about that to me and I would rather continue releasing short projects until I really grow my fanbase to that place.
You have some appearances in the tri-state area?
I do. June 19th, I’ll be at Liberty State Park for the All About Us festival and on June 20th I will be in New York for the Gold Foundation Gala. June 27th I’ll be a Rockwood Music Hand then all the way in August, August 16th I’ll be doing a concert in Jersey. It’s actually a concert series “Concert on the Hudson,” I believe it’s called, on the water in Edgewater. So yeah, I’ve got some things coming up! My new project, my new EP will be called Welcome Home and it will be out in August. I have a new single coming out at the end of the month and a new video. The single is called Care and I can’t wait for people to see the video. I just shot it this past weekend. We’re out on the beach. I have a man in my video, and if people know me, I really usually don’t have a love interest in my videos. It’s very few and far between all the videos I’ve shot, so this video is for the ladies.
Lis
