Ashanti

Glen Cove to the top two of the Hot 100

Ashanti Shequoiya Douglas was born on 13 October 1980 in Glen Cove, on the north shore of Long Island. She was still a teenager when the producer Irv Gotti picked her up and put her on Murder Inc. Records, the Def Jam-affiliated label that dominated rap-and-R&B crossover at the turn of the century. Gotti's method was to use her as the sung counterweight to rappers, and it worked immediately: she sang the hook on Fat Joe's "What's Luv?" and on Ja Rule's "Always on Time".

What happened next is the part of her story that still gets cited. In 2002 she became the first woman to hold the top two positions on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, with those two guest appearances. Her own single "Foolish" went on to spend ten weeks at number one, and she became the second act after the Beatles to have her first three chart entries sitting in the top ten simultaneously. She was 21.

The records that still carry the set

Her self-titled debut arrived in 2002, entered the Billboard 200 at number one and was certified triple platinum. It took the Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B Album in 2003. Chapter II followed later that year and also went to number one, certified platinum; Concrete Rose came in 2004 and went platinum too. Ashanti's Christmas, also 2003, sat slightly outside that run.

The commercial momentum thinned after that. The Declaration appeared in 2008 and Braveheart in 2014, the latter released independently after she had left the major-label system. Braveheart remains her most recent studio album. In the gap she took acting work — Coach Carter and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz in 2005, John Tucker Must Die in 2006, Resident Evil: Extinction in 2007 — and kept recording as a featured voice.

The singles that still travel are mostly from the first three years, with one notable later addition: "Baby", her 2022 collaboration with the Manchester rapper Aitch, which gave her a current British record and a reliable guest spot when she plays the north of England.

Buying the catalogue back

The defining strand of her recent career is ownership. After roughly two decades she secured the rights to re-record her Universal material, and she has been working through the 2002 debut, remaking it as a version she controls. She first spoke publicly about the plan in 2021 and has returned to it in interview after interview since, framing it in flat terms about contracts and what artists sign at twenty.

Speaking to Rolling Stone AU/NZ ahead of the November 2026 tour, she put the emphasis on authorship as much as on masters: "Taking that ownership – as far as writing, as far as producing and all of those things." She has also said new, original material is coming, though no title or release date has been attached to it.

The re-recording is being filmed. Nelly and Ashanti: We Belong Together, the Peacock series that debuted in June 2025 and was renewed in March 2026, returns for a second season on 19 November 2026 with all eight episodes released at once. The season follows her through the re-recording sessions, collaborations with newer artists, and the commute between St. Louis and New York; on Nelly's side it deals with whether he carries on touring after twenty years. She married him in December 2023 and their son was born in July 2024.

Where she stands in late 2026

The live work has been steady rather than album-led. In April 2025 she co-headlined Sean Paul's Bring It Tour across the UK and Ireland, taking nine of the thirteen dates — Dublin, Newcastle, Leeds, Glasgow, Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and London — with Fat Joe added for the London show. That run put her back in British arenas for the first time in years.

Through 2026 she has worked a mix of American casino rooms, fairs and festivals: Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California on 27 June, the Great New York State Fair in Syracuse on 31 August, then Reno on 24 September, Airway Heights on 26 September, Atlantic City on 2 October and Fresno on 9 October.

The Rock Wit U Tour takes her to Australia and New Zealand in November 2026: Riverside Theatre in Perth on the 9th, Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on the 11th, the TikTok Entertainment Centre in Sydney on the 13th, Margaret Court Arena in Melbourne on the 14th and the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre in Auckland on the 16th. It follows appearances at Fridayz Live in 2022 and Juicy Fest in 2024. Two further dates are on the books for 2027 — the Xcite Center at Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania on 22 January and Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York on 27 August.

What the show actually is

The current set is tightly built around 2002 to 2004 and makes no pretence otherwise. It opens on "Rock Wit U (Awww Baby)", moves through the Ja Rule catalogue she sang on — "Wonderful", "Mesmerize", "Down 4 U", "Always on Time" — picks up "Happy", "Only U", "The Way That I Love You", "Rain on Me" and "Baby", then takes in the guest hooks that made her: "Into You", "What's Luv?", "Southside" and the Murder Remix of "Ain't It Funny". It closes on "Foolish", usually run into "Unfoolish". At Thunder Valley in June she played 17 songs between 9.10pm and 10.10pm; at Syracuse in August the list ran to 20.

The guest-hook structure means a large share of the night is material credited to other artists, which she addresses head-on. At the State Fair she told a crowd of around 19,000 that she had a hand in writing every song in the set, and used the gaps between numbers to talk about heartbreak, the marriage and motherhood. She has said "Foolish" is still the one she most wants to perform, because rooms of fifteen to twenty thousand people sing a twenty-year-old record back at her.