![]() “ Actually, I made a bet with somebody who said that the album would go gold quickly“, she says. For Chapman, it’s all come as a surprise. For Tracy Chapman, public attention now comes with the territory – because in the five months since the release of her album, TRACY CHAPMAN, on Elektra Records, her territory has come to include a Top Five album a striking and widely seen video for the single “Fast Car” a stunning performance before millions of fans at Wembley Stadium and in the television audience for the Nelson Mandela Birthday Tribute, in June and currently a slot alongside Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour on Amnesty International’s worldwide tour, Human Rights Now! She may be shy and private and uneasy with some of the trappings of fame, but this young black woman from working-class Cleveland is THE new artist of the year, maybe the new artist of many years. “ I think“, she mutters under a breath, “ I gotta catch a HAT.” “And that HAIR.” Tracy Chapman fingers her short dreadlocks, grins gamely and sighs. “I couldn’t get tickets to your show here”, she says, “but I’d recognize that face anywhere.” A pause. The woman stands at the table a moment longer, a big grin on her face. Chapman tries to be gracious as she scribbles her name on a matchbook, but mostly she looks uncomfortable. In two hours she is due at the Atlanta Center Stage Theatre for a concert that was the fastest sellout in the venue’s history now, midway through her tempura, there’s a woman standing over the table, asking for an autograph. At the moment, she is hearing it as she sits at a table just inside a Japanese restaurant in Atlanta. It’s a questions she hears a couple of times every day: in restaurants, airports, hotels, even laundromats and gyms. “ Yeah“, says Tracy Chapman, in a voice so soft it’s barely audible. And finally – the process has taken all of one or two seconds – she answers the question. Then she looks down at the ground, and without raising her eyes, she nods her head, quickly and almost imperceptibly. ![]() Then she grins: it’s an embarrassed, nervous grin, not a happy grin. ![]() First, her eyes flash with wariness and momentary distaste: she looks as if she were ready to deny it and walk away. She hears the question everywhere she goes, and her response is always the same. Tracy Chapman had a feeling she could be someone.
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