Laneah menzies biography of michael

LOWELL — Growing up in the gritty bleakness of the Lowell projects, LaNeah Menzies said music was her singular fascination — and salvation.

Pop, R&B, soul and gospel tunes were always playing in her home, first in an apartment on Shaughnessy Terrace in the Julian D. Steele projects when she was a baby, and then in the Adams Street projects in the Acre neighborhood, where she moved as a middle-schooler. As essential as water, those songs made the deepest imprint on her young and passionate soul.

For family and friends, the young girl belted out those infectious pop and R&B melodies and twirled to those danceable grooves. And she filled notebooks with her poetry, trying her hand at songwriting at a young age. But she only really performed for her family.

“Every single holiday, there was always a time that music would go on,” she said, “and I would be standing on the coffee table, singing to the brush, which was my microphone.”

But now, Menzies, 23, better known by her stage name, StarShell, will be coming home to Lowell to perform her music — not just to her family but to her hometown — as the first female artist to be signed to Mary J. Blige’s record label, Matriarch/Interscope.

“It’s home,&rdqu

•