Joyce Irby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (May 2008)

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (May 2008)

Joyce Irby is best known as the bassist and co-lead vocalist of the 1980s all girl band Klymaxx. She originally signed on with George Clinton's P-Funk crew as "Fenderella". In 1989,she did a solo deal with Motown Records and had 3 charted Billboard singles, most notable "Mr DJ" with Doug E Fresh which peaked at # 2.

Irby relocated from Los Angeles to Atlanta in the late 1980s and since 1986 began attempting to engineer the rise of Atlanta as an urban music center by soliciting major record labels to form regional offices in the Atlanta area.

Irby's greater impact may have been the result of her signing a young Dallas Austin as a songwriter and producer in 1988. Dallas produced the first TLC (band) and Boyz II Men projects while still signed to Irby's company Diva One Entertainment.

Ten years later, as an artist developer she signed child star Sammie Bush, and made a deal with Dallas and Capital Records which launched Sammie's career when he was 12 years old. Irby also signed Lloyd (The Inc) as an 11 year old and developed and guided his career through four major record deals (Warner, Dreamworks, Magic Johnson Music/MCA, The Inc/Universal). She continues to serve as Executive Producer on Lloyd's albums, "Street Love" being the most recent.