From IAMOnlineMag.com

Shorty Corleone may have thought he put his Mafioso personality aside when he took on his birth moniker for Charles Garris Presents: It’s Christmas, but this album is less like Bing Crosby and more like what the soundtrack would be if “Belly” were a Nativity movie. In his version, the story about Frosty uses The Delfonics’s “Hey! Love” sample that our generation may most famously remember as the foundation of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Playa Hater;” the story of Rudolph has a reggae beat; and every other track has a go-go swang.

Garris became a professional vocalist at age 14 when he signed with Warner Brothers. “Someone had heard songs that I wrote and heard my voice and passed it on to Verdine White of Earth Wind & Fire,” he told IAM. “Before you know it, I was presented with a publishing deal and a recording deal.” Like many teen-aged record deals, however, it ended with a shelved project, but, for Garris, “after having a taste of that, it didn’t stop.”

Meanwhile, growing up in Southeast, D.C. placed Garris in the vicinity of another deal. “[Rare Essence] practiced one street over from my grandmother’s house so I would always go to the alley trying to listen to what’s going on. For a long time,” though, “I decided not to actually be in a go-go band because I wanted to pursue my R&B career.” The decision didn’t stick, however, because, “when you’re from Southeast that beat is on every corner, there’s a band in every alley, someone is beating on buckets somewhere, so you couldn’t ignore it.” By 1993, he joined Rare Essence and Shorty Corleone was officially born.

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Animated/Directed: Andrew Young
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Project Director: Brandi Dunnegan
Hosted: Nadia
Production & Edited: Kato – TMOTTMedia

Special Thanks to:
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Laughing Lenny
Amando – Kemp Mill Records

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