This post is the first in a series of retrospectives I will be doing on various musical acts that were successful and then for one reason or another, flopped off of the face of the universe. This post is about Danity Kane, the supergroup put together by Sean “Diddy” combs on MTV’s hit TV show, Making the Band 3.
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Before Danity Kane existed, they were just five women trying to make it in the music industry by auditioning for the reality show “Making the Band 3”. Aubrey O’ Day, Aundrea Fimbres, and Malika all auditioned in front Diddy, Bad Boy executives, and Miss Boom-Kack herself, Laurie-Ann Gibson. You’ll notice how I didn’t mention the other three members of Danity Kane, it’s because they weren’t introduced until the second season of MTB3. Towards the end of the first season of the reality show, he had these three women, and a group of others that he wanted to whittle down into a group, but felt that aside from these three, the rest weren’t worthy of winning, so while these three were winners, all they really won was a chance to come back to season 2 of MTB3 and fight for the chance to be in a group, again.
The three winners of Making The Band 3 Season 1: Aubrey, Malika, and Aundrea
Season 2 happened much like the first, Diddy and company (again, including Boom-Kack) set out to find more women to make a girl supergroup out of and in this second search, he found Shannon Bex, Dawn Richard, and Wanita “D. Woods” Woodgett along with a dozen other girls, and flew them all to NY to compete in the reality show, while also flying back out the ‘winners’ of MTB3 Season 1. The competition commence, and all of the aforementioned females made it to the finale, aside from Malika, who was eliminated during the competition as her ability wasn’t up to the standard of the others. The five girls were picked out of 10 that were left, and became the winners of MTB3 Season 2, and were officially a girl group, without a name. The group decided on the name ‘Danity Kane’ mainly from a comic that member Dawn drew where that was the female heroine’s name. They flew down to Miami to record their first CD and commence filming on MTB3 Season 3.
Box Art for Danity Kane's debut album
Danity Kane’s first album was self-titled, and featured production from Brian Michael Cox, Darkchild, Scott Storch, and Timbaland, among others, and is a blend of POP and R&B songs over the course of the 15-track album. The album is mostly filler though, and the only standout tracks are “Show Stopper”, “Touchin’ My Body”, and the hidden track “Sleep on It” which is pretty much amazing. The album opened up at #1 on the BB 200 Albums charts with over 235k albums sold, and went on to go platinum, and to spawn a Top 10 hit with “Show Stopper”. In support of the first album, Danity Kane went on tour as the opening act for Christina Aguilera’s “Back 2 Basics” tour, along with fellow girl group, PCD.
Box Art for Danity Kane's Sophmore album
After coming off of touring, and fighting constant rumors of breaking up, Danity Kane was back in the studio recording their sophomore album, and filming season 2 of Making the Band 4 along with other Bad Boy Group, Day26 (but that’s a story for another post). The second album was named “Welcome to the Dollhouse” and featured much of the same production, but this time, the group had written a large handful of tracks for the album, a departure from the first album when the wrote none of the tracks. Much like the first album, this album also featured only a handful of tracks worth a listen. The two singles “Damaged” and “Bad Girl” are great, along with album song “Ecstasy (feat. Rick Ross)” is also well worth a listen. Again, the song opened at #1 on the Billboard 200 Album charts, and Danity Kane became the first girl group ever to open at the top of the Billboard 200 Album charts with their first two albums. Lead single “Damaged” went top 10 and was certified platinum, along with the album. The girls at this point were a moderately successful pop group with two #1 platinum albums and two top 10 singles, so they went on tour with the rest of the MTB crew as the headliners for the Making The Band tour. The ‘tour’ only featured six dates, and were all at very small venues, but it was their first (and only) headlining tour.
Shortly after the tour completed, promotion of the album came to a halt, and the members of the group were seemingly having issues. Their second single was released to no promotion at all, Aubrey had taken on a role in the Broadway musical ‘Hairspray’ and missed a mountain of performance dates for the group because of her prior obligation in the musical, Aundrea had expressed unhappiness with the group, and Dawn was apparently being groomed for a solo career. All of these issues were exacerbated by the blogs and rumor mill which didn’t help when management were not being forthcoming about what was happening with the group. Because of the lack of communication between the members and the group, tensions rose, trust fell, and the unhappy feeling spread like wildfire between the group and management. This all came to a head during a special episode of Making the Band where Diddy called a group meeting between the members of the group to discuss their status. When all of the group had finished airing out their grievances within the group and management, Diddy dropped the bomb. He himself was unhappy with the group and summarily fired Aubrey for her attitude and how much she had changed from the girl he had signed to the disrespectful person with an attitude she had shown herself to be over the course of the previous months because of the discontent with the group. Aubrey clearly had an issue with Dawn because she was recording demos for Diddy’s then upcoming album, and was forgoing group appearances for her own personal obligations. For that reason she was fired, and along with her, D. Woods was fired because she also expressed unhappiness, and more than anything, for being friends with Aubrey and feeding into her, rather than fostering communication between them all.
DK3 went on to make appearances as a trio, and DK3 (minus Shannon) went on to film MTB 4 Season 3, but the damage was done, the group was effectively over as Diddy terminated the remaining girls’ contracts, and washed his hands of the group. During the series finale of Making The Band, more questions were asked than answered, and we still don’t have a true reason for the breakup of the group, but from the finale, we can glean that there was (and still is) an issue between Aubrey/D.Woods and Dawn, and between Aubrey and Aundrea. Shannon was clearly the only one that no one had an issue with and was simply caught in the crossfire, so to speak. They’ve all at separate times expressed that a reunion could happen, but it hasn’t happened yet, as of this date.
Since Danity Kane has ended, Aubrey has went on to pose for playboy and star in a six episode reality show on Oxygen, “All About Aubrey”. D. Woods’ biggest claim to fame after DK as far as I can see is having a cameo in Young Money’s “Every Girl” video. Shannon has started her own solo career, with her debut Solo EP “I’m A Woman” releasing last September on iTunes. She funded the album using a ‘kickstarter’ like program used by independent artists. Aundrea has shunned the spotlight, and there is very little information out there about what she’s currently up to, but she did make an appearance on O’day’s reality show to record a single “Ego Trip” for O’day’s oft delayed ‘album’.
Dawn has really been the most successful of the group after it’s disbandment. She did end up working with Diddy on his album, being featured with him in his group “Dirty Money” on Last Train to Paris. The album went Gold and spawned a top 20 hit in ‘Coming Home’ along with a tour. She has also experienced solo success and her debut album is coming out in January of 2013 in stores as an actual packaged album after partnering with Altovoz distribution to distribute the album, making her the first group member to release a solo album after the disbandment (and two albums, if you count her part in Last Train to Paris).
Danity Kane was a flawless group full of singers and dancers who allowed personal issues cloud their judgment as a group. Their story should be a warning to those who are currently in a group and feel that they are bigger than the group. Maybe Danity Kane should have had a conversation or two with Destiny’s foster Children. At least we still have some amazing tracks to listen to in remembrance of them.
Join me in my next retrospective as I chronicle the meteoric rise and fall of Ashanti’s career from princess of R&B to nobody.