CITY GIRL

About CITY GIRL

The artist The real CityGirl was born in 1988 on May 3rd as Alysa Sherwood. She grew up in East Saint Louis Rush City, Il. Everyone from Estl calls the residents of Rush City by the name of the town, which is how the rapper adopted the name City. Alysa started playing the piano at 7 years old, beginning taught by her cousin Richard Wade, a locally known music teacher for the city’s Jr High’s and High Schools. She broke her right hand at 11 years old in the 6th grade and no longer had the desire to continue playing the piano. Even though her Great Grandfather Bishop James F Hall wasn’t going for that. She continued to play only in the church until he passed. City wrote her first rap song at the age of 11, before then she had tried to be a singer but never found a singing voice of her own that satisfied her taste. After having to perform her private material live for her mother who wasn’t always around, after going through her things and found her music and an Uncle, City laid back on speaking out about being a rapper for many years. City’s mother and uncle went on and on about how she would be great if she rapped and played the piano, like a rapping Alicia Keys. She did not like this idea, because she no longer wanted to play the piano. Rap was her passion but living in the Bishops house beginning taught how to be a woman by the first Lady of the church there was no place for that rap crap anyway. CityGirl grandfather passed when she was 15years old and a lot of things around her began to chance, life became more laid back and less route, but still attending church every Sunday. She moved to Dallas, Texas for 8 months and when returning to ESTL had a brand new out look on music and had really began to believe she had a career in the music business. At the age of 17 she started Seductive ENT and started signing other students from her high school. They didn’t know how they where going to make it happen, but the dream was there and the drive. One day City sat down with her pen and pad, like always, she hadn’t wrote any rap music in many years, her energy was gear towards ghostwriting r and b music and poetry. But lately rap had just been hunting her, so she decided that she would write a rap song for a friend, the song didn’t end up being a song at all but the longest verse every 112 bars long. Guess the rap pen had a lot to spit out, and in order for City to tell her friend how to rap it she had to learn it herself, duh.. Little did she know that was the day CityGirl was born, in September of 2005.


CityGirl grew up in a Christian home, with a lot of very strike rules on clothing, where they could go, what they watched on tv, and what music they listened too. But City and her siblings always found away to check out the latest hits topping the charts. She had a radio in her room with a tape recorder attached to it and a tape player with a pair of head phones she would sneak and record songs off the radio on a tape and duck off and listening all she wanted in private. Since they didn’t have cable tv, the only place to catch a music video was The Box, channel 58. They would always get caught watching it but they didn’t care, it was worth every bit to hear Usher say “its 7 oclock on the dot, I’m my drop top cursing the street.. um um uh um.” Or Eminem say “Them Mother fuckers act like they forgot about Dre.” CityGirl was born, and create by so many of the Great before her Missy Elliot, Nas, Eminem, Jayz, Pimp C and Bun B, 36 Mafia, Twista, Bone Thugs and Harmony, Nelly, Pretty Willie, Alicia Keys, Usher, Beyoncé, Destiny’s Child, just to name a few. “We would need a whole page alone to name all the Greats that inspired me”, she said. Music gave her a new life when her real life just didn’t really work in her favor. Even though she was raised in a great home with her Great grandparents as wonderful parents, there was empty spaces in her heart and music was like a box of tissues and warm fussy blanket. It was a shoulder to lean on when there was none and until this day has been CITY’s longest relationship, her partner, ride or die. Somethings never die, and for CityGirl music is that thing.
I asked CityGirl where does she see herself in the future when it come to music? She closed her eyes and said “standing in front of crowd of people who feel me. Cause they took the time to listen to my words, and they too had been where I’ve been and came out swinging, cause they fought for what they believe in. Delivering my testimony to believers. Believers in life, in chances, and that anything you set your mind to, you can achieve. And I don’t mean just the things we think about, but the things we serious set out minds too do, putting plans in motion and following thru, that we can achieve anything, and Greatness is the goal. So where do I see myself in the future when it comes to music, What Nicki say “I fly with the stars in the sky”… I say “I’m so freaking fly, I should be flying in the sky.” So just look for me where the Greats be.”