Cassandra Steen, singing and winning awards in Germany

Hat tip: Euromight

Source: Wikipedia

Cassandra Steen is a German singer, songwriter and voice actress, who rose to fame as the lead singer of the trio Glashaus. After a series of commercially successful releases with the group, Steen released her solo debut album Seele mit Herz in 2003. After her departure from Glashaus and a label change to Universal Urban Records in 2007, she released her second album Darum leben wir in February 2009. A gold-certified the top ten success, it spawned three singles, including “Stadt,” the fourth biggest-selling single of 2009 in Germany. In 2010, she won the ECHO Award for Best National Artist Rock/Pop.

Also in 2009, Steen voiced the character Tiana in the German dub of Disney’s 49th animated feature The Princess and the Frog. “Never Knew I Needed,” a duet with original singer Ne-Yo, was the first single to be lifted from the accompanying soundtrack.

Steen is the only child born to an African American father and a German mother in Ostfildern-Ruit near Stuttgart, Germany in 1980. In 1997, Steen’s demo tape got into the hands of a befriended producer, who passed it to an up and coming hip hop group, he was working with Freundeskreis. Impressed by her voice, Steen was invited to contribute backing vocals to the trio’s 1997 debut album Quadratur des Kreises, gaining her first official feature credit on their collaboration “Telefonterror.” The following year she appeared in Freundeskreis’ music video for their single “Wenn der Vorhang fällt” and accompanied the band on their first tour throughout German-speaking Europe. Further collaborations with Freundeskreis failed to materialize as Steen decided to move to Hamburg in hopes of a solo career launch and soon she was offered a contract with the independent label Booya Records.