Some say that true art is born out of pain; that it is the prodigious love child of those that have dealth with heartache and lived to tell about it. People who know how it feels to be alone, to be afraid, to be blue. If the music on her stunning debut album, So Blu, is any indication, soul singer/songwriter Blu Cantrell has clearly mastered the art of forging pain into pleasure, turing something that hurts so bad into something that feels (and sounds) so good.

From the first soulful notes of the impassioned torch song, "Till I'm Gone," to the head-nodding drive of the vengeful first single "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)," 25-year-old Blu delivers all the wrath and volatile emotion of a woman too-often scorned. "I think you can feel the pain I've experienced in my music," she says. "It's something that a lot of people can relate to. You can hear the hurt in my voice and I think a lot of people have gone through that kind of pain."

A native of Providence, Rhode Island, Blu says her interest in music - especially jazz - emerged at an early age. "My mother was a jazz singer. She couldn't afford a babysitter, so whenever she would sing, she would take us [Blu and her siblings] with her and we would sit in the dressing room. I would usually make my way out to the stage to watch her sing."

As a young adult, Blu would continue to find solace in music, using it to absorb her pain and heal a heart broken by love gone awry. Her lyrics, like the teardrops of a tormented lover, are fresh and salty, staining and cleansing in thier wake. "My music comes from hurt, from being in relationships where I felt I was taken advantage of," she explains. "I was in love, but the relationships didn't work out."

Blu took her affinity for music to another level when, during a visit to Atlanta, she met RedZone Entertainment executives Tab and C. "Tricky" Stewart. They listened to her demo and their creative relationship quickly took root. Her obvious talent led to opportunities to sing background vocals, both in the recording studio and onstage, for some of today's biggest R&B and hip-hop artists, including Faith Evans, Puff Daddy, Gerald Levert and Aaron Hall, among others.

Once word spread throughout the music industry about this exciting young songstress, the inevitable competition between record labels began. Within the first 30 seconds of hearing her sing, Arista Records president/CEO Antontio "L.A." Reid recognized that Blu possessed a distinctive and heartfelt voice that was destined for success. "Blu's 'Till I'm Gone' brought out feelings that I hadn't felt for a very long time," Reid says. "Her voice seemed to satisfy that yearning in my soul, not only for a great singer, but also for a sound that I felt was missing in today's music. Blu is that sound. Blu is that soul. Blu is that artist."

During the creative process, Blu recalls spending time in the recording studio with A&R exec and co-writer Tab and producer Tricky, sharing her life, her joys, and her sorrows. Through those conversations, they discovered her motivation and were able to tap into her dreams and fears. "They wouldn't just write a track and go right on to the next one," Blu remembers. "They would actually sit down and talk to me, getting to know where I was coming from as a person."

So Blu, the singer's stellar Arista debut, is the result: a musical diary revealing the innermost thoughts and experiences of a young woman trying, like many, to succeed at love. With wide-ranging music influences like Billie Holiday, Sade, Kim Burrell, Karen Clark, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, Sting, Prince, and Arista labelmates Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, it's easy to see that Blu's lyrics, music, and emotion are real. With tracks produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Dallas Austin, Laney Stewart, Don Vito, and Jaso Rome, So Blu boasts a bevy of songs dripping with emotion, attitude, and artistry. The album was executive-produced by Tab, Tricky, and L.A. Reid.

Written and produced by Dallas Austin, the album's blazin' first single, "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)," allows Blu to drown her sorrows with revenge. The track garnered an early fan in Funkmaster Flex, a popular deejay at New York's top radio station, Hot 97-FM. "This song is about a woman who has found out that her man is cheating," Blu explains. "She knows that the only way she can really hurt him is in his pocket, so she goes out and spends all his money with her friends." The song's thriving chorus urges: "Hey ladies, when your man wanna get buck wild / Just go back and hit 'em up style / Put your hands on his cash and spend it to the last dime / for all the hard times."

"Till I'm Gone," the album's most personal track, opens with Blu's pain-drenched voice sailing over a quietly haunting piano and flows into a dramatic, soulful hook. "'Till I'm Gone' means a lot to me because it was the first song I recorded [with Tricky and Tab]," she offers. "I was at the peak of my pain. Everything I was feeling at that time went into that song." The introspective title track, she says, is the cornerstone of the album. Falling in step with the emotional direction of the album, RedZone songwriter/producer Laney Stweart penned the breezy, plaintive "Ten Thousand Times," about a woman who is reluctant to give in to love. Other standouts include the carefree, danceable "It's Alright" and the somber "Killing Me," about the frustration of loving someone long distance.

Co-written almost entirely by the artist, So Blu is a profoundly engaging display of lyrical and vocal talent by an artist capable of unleashing her feelings with such a bravura it makes pain a lot less painful and music a lot more meaningful. Her artistry and emotion will no doubt make music fans the world over instantly familiar with the name Blu.