Ms. Irene Rene’s first introduction to wanting to sing was being a part of the children’s choir at church. As a teenager she was involved with groups and traveling with church adult choirs. Then she became fascinated with talent shows and started doing fashion shows. Her forte was singing with a rap group, so she started building on the hunger. One of the actual relevant points to Ms. Irene Rene singing was actually hearing a girl sing in her 9th grade class. “I think it was at the beginning of the school year. The teacher was going around and asking us to introduce ourselves and what talents we have. This girl said she could sing and boy oh boy, the teacher invited her up to sing and she had an amazing voice. All I remember from that point is going home and trying to duplicate that sound and that song. I would whale and whale and whale until I learned that song and so I guess my mother had had enough and she yelled down, “shut up!” That was me trying to develop my voice and my style, so I was inspired by a schoolmate. I kept on from there. I remember singing at a talent show. The day after, one of the classmates came to find me and said, “Oh that’s the girl that can sing.” So that encouraged me and I had a little write up in the school paper. That was probably one of the major coins that started my development. But, of course, you hear all of the crazy stories about being a starving artist and I didn’t want to be a starving artist. What I learned, if you don’t consume your passion, you’ll starve spiritually and that’s what I was ultimately doing, I was starving myself spiritually. After going to college and working in Corporate America, I was starving spiritually because I wasn’t true to myself; true to that passion that I had, to sing. So, with that said, I left Corporate America and I did go back to school to study Psychology and ultimately I came away from that. I teach now. I learned that I have a
ms irene renee