A Strong, New R&B; Voice Stirs Up Battle of the Sexes

Last summer, it could have been mistaken as a trend story: Women in top-selling songs by various R&B; groups were rising up and declaring their dissatisfaction with men.

TLC sold millions of copies of “No Scrubs,” which disdained losers “hangin’ around the passenger side of his best friend’s ride, trying to holler at me.” Then Destiny’s Child rose on the strength of “Bills, Bills, Bills,” decrying a “triflin’ good-for-nothin’ type of brother.”

Anyone who looked closely at the fine print, though, saw that it had aspects of a one-woman campaign.

Kandi Burruss wrote both the songs that struck such a strong chord with listeners last year.

The 24-year-old singer from Xscape, who began to explore writing apart from that group, won awards for her success last year. Then she started saving up songs for her own debut album, “Hey Kandi . . ,” which so far has produced the Top 25 single “Don’t Think I’m Not.”

And the Atlanta-born singer, who goes only by her first name, Kandi, has returned to the stage as part of a traveling hip-hop show that includes Nelly, Ja Rule and Cash Money Millionaires.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve toured,” Kandi says, “because even on the third Xscape album [in 1998], we didn’t do an official tour; we just did spot dates.”

Although her slot is modest on the show, she stands out. As she says, “I’m the only girl on the tour.”

Not that her strong stance in stirring up the battle of the sexes puts her in an uncomfortable position.

“People say, ‘You’re a male basher,’ ” Kandi says. “But I’m just having fun, talking about everyday life.”

The fact that her best-known songs have women criticizing men “wasn’t purposeful,” she says. “Whenever I write a song, I think about how the song makes me feel. I try to incorporate personal life experiences with something that’s funny to talk about. It’s not like I’m trying to be on some girl-power thing.

“I usually try to use lyrics that are kind of funny and make people laugh. I like to write very animated things, where you can visualize what’s going on; you can laugh about what’s going on. Like ‘No Scrubs’ is meant to be a funny way to talk about a guy that’s using girls. That he’s a dog or a bum. I usually try to make it funny that way.

“Even on ‘Bug-A-Boo,’ ” she says, referring to another Destiny’s Child track, “it could be about a guy or a girl. It’s about the kind of person, if you told them to call back in five minutes, they’d call back at 4:59.”

“No Scrubs” and “Bills, Bills, Bills” took on lives of their own.

“I would hear debates on the radio where people would say, ‘I don’t need to pay all the bills,’ ” she says. “Which means the guy wasn’t listening to the song, because on ‘Bills Bills Bills,’ the girl is singing about a guy who is running up the bills and saying if he doesn’t pay for it, he’s got to go.”

When TLC’s Rozanda “Chilli” Thomas was threatened in a mall by someone mad about “No Scrubs,” Kandi says, “I was, like, this is getting out of hand.”

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On the other hand, when Sporty Thievz recorded “No Pigeons,” an answer song from the men’s point of view, it may have surprised some that Burruss’ name was among the credits.

But it wasn’t there because she shared its point of view. “They used our lyric and changed around the melody, so we got some of the publishing,” Kandi says. “A lot of radio stations were playing both of them back to back.”

Having a hand in three of the year’s biggest hits helped her become the first woman to win a songwriter-of-the-year award at this year’s annual ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Music Awards.

With hit-making producer Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, with whom she wrote “No Scrubs,” she also wrote Pink’s “There You Go,” Sole’s “4, 5, 6” and the current Usher single “Pop Ya Collar.”

Much sought after for her work, Kandi could have continued in a successful songwriting career. Instead, she began work on her own album.

She tried to submit songs for Xscape, which was tightly under the control of producer Jermaine Dupri. She finally got to use one of them when she recorded “Easier” with Faith Evans for her debut album.

Writing for herself was hard at first. “I had writer’s block,” she says. “I was nervous thinking of what other people would think of me. I was over-thinking things. Nothing sounded good enough.”

Eventually she settled down when she returned to the philosophy she used to write for others: “Just write what sounded good to me.”

Her biggest thrill was when ‘N Sync not only recorded her “Makes Me Ill” but sang it on their sold-out tour. “When I went to their concert, it made me feel good when everyone sang,” Kandi said. “Everyone in the whole arena had memorized the words.”

On the slot in her current tour--all 12 minutes and 34 seconds of it--she sticks to her own recordings and two from Xscape on which she sang lead, “Just Kickin’ It” and “My Little Secret”. But she says she has no time to sing all the hits she wrote for others.

No matter what kind of disrespectful language about women may come from the other rappers on the bill, Kandi says, she’ll keep cool.

“It doesn’t really bother me. All my life I’ve listened to that music. They do their thing, and I do mine. Just like I talk about people I know, I’m sure the guys are talking about people they know. I don’t take it personally.”