Ashanti

Ashanti's career didn't build slowly — it exploded. Her self-titled debut album dropped in April 2002 and immediately set a SoundScan record for opening-week sales by a new female artist, moving 503,000 copies in the U.S. alone (Wikipedia). In that same week, she became the first woman to simultaneously hold the top two positions on the Billboard Hot 100 — 'Foolish' at number one, 'What's Luv?' (with Fat Joe) right behind it — and then stacked a third top-ten hit, 'Always on Time' with Ja Rule, making her only the second act in history (after the Beatles) to place three songs in the top ten of the Hot 100 in a single week (Wikipedia). Hard to overstate how unusual that was. The accolades followed fast. She won eight Billboard Awards and two American Music Awards on the strength of that debut, and in 2003 she took home a Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B Album (Wikipedia). Her label dubbed her the 'Princess of Hip-Hop & R&B' — a title that, honestly, the charts had already handed her before anyone put it on a press release. She also played a behind-the-scenes role in Jennifer Lopez's back-to-back number-one remixes that year, co-writing and singing background on both 'I'm Real (Murder Remix)' and 'Ain't It Funny (Murder Remix),' which were charting at the same time as her own three singles (Wikipedia). That's a lot of real estate on one chart. Within seven years of launching her career, Ashanti had scored 16 top-40 hits on the Hot 100 (Wikipedia). Her fourth studio album, The Declaration, arrived on June 3, 2008, and she was already working on a fifth at the time of that release (Wikipedia). She's also crossed into acting and has been involved in film and television projects throughout her career. On the philanthropic side, she appeared on the 'Just Stand Up' charity single alongside 14 other female artists for the Stand Up to Cancer television special, which raised $100 million for cancer research (Wikipedia). By 2010, 'Foolish' alone had sold more than 7.4 million copies in the U.S., placing her at number 17 on the list of best-selling singles since 1990 (Wikipedia).