Kelly Price didn’t just prove a point—she shattered a stereotype when her debut album outsold Mya’s, weeks after a music executive dismissed her talent because of her size and complexion.
During a recent livestream, the Grammy-nominated singer recalled a meeting where a Black male executive openly degraded her appearance in front of a white female colleague.
“Angela [an executive with T-Neck/Island/Universal] said to him, ‘there’s nobody out there with a voice like hers,’” Kelly Price said.
“So I sat down, and I’m kind of getting comfortable, because we’re getting ready to start our weekly meeting. And the call took a left turn because he [another executive at Universal] said, ‘You got to be out of your mind. I don’t care how good that girl sings, ain’t no way in the world your big fat whatever, is gonna out sell my pretty, light skin, long haired [singer].’”
Price clarified the story wasn’t about Mya, who was signed to University Music, which was distributed by Interscope/Universal, but about the industry’s obsession with image over skill.
“Don’t try to say this is Mya hate. This is not that; this is actually what happened,” she said. “I’ve been called every fat b####, every this, every that.”
Despite the executive’s harsh words and the bet he made with another label head that Mya would outperform her, Price’s debut album, Soul of a Woman, proved him wrong.
“We outsold, we outsold that artist,” she said. “I remember my first week numbers, we outsold that artist, probably by about 30 or 40,000 records.”
The incident, rooted in both colorism and body-shaming, highlighted the barriers Price faced early in her career. The executive’s remarks, calling her “big, Black, fat” while praising a “pretty, light-skinned, thin girl,” weren’t just personal insults.
They reflected a broader industry bias that often sidelines women who don’t fit a narrow beauty mold.
Price said she leaned on support from her team, including Ronald Isley, who owned the T-Neck label with The Isley Brothers, who reminded her that her voice and presence resonated with real women.