Classic Ultra Nate Tracks and Videos
It's unfair to define an artist strictly by a handful of songs, but it happens anyway. And this is our contribution to defining the key moments in Ultra Nate's career at the top of dance music divas.
Ultra Naté maintains substantial control over her work and image, and as a result insists that making videos (which House Music artists often neglect is absolutely essential. From our May 2007 interview:
5 MAGAZINE: I remember seeing your videos on MTV and I'm glad to see you're still making them. I can't imagine the Rolling Stones or Gwen Stefani doing a song without a video, either.
ULTRA: It's absolutely imperative, and I really have a hard time accepting anything less. I feel like what I do is just as credible as anyone else in any other genre. It's just that this particular genre is treated like a bastard child, so people expect less and people strive for less in it. To me that's so short-sighted. That's never the way I want to lead my project. I want to compare my project to everyone else's, in every other genre. It's just as credible. I want what everyone else has!
If you reach for the stars and you fall a little bit short - at least that's what you were aiming for. If you don't strive for greatness of some sort, you're always going to be mediocre, and who wants to be mediocre? You wouldn't accept that. I also think it's really important because the market is so media-driven now that you have to have a strong visual in order to push things further than just that underground, in-the-club, dancefloor moment.
+ Related: Ultra Chic: Ultra Naté Reloaded
Twisted (Got Me Goin' Round) Ultra Nate's latest hit, co-produced by Ultra Nate and Louie Vega (see our August 2008 interview for more on the origins of the collaboration). Video directed by Karl Giant, who does a number Ultra's super-lush photo shoots.
It's Over Now (Basement Boys Mix) The single that started it all, produced by the Basement Boys and released on the 1991 album Blue Notes in the Basement on Warner Brothers and re-recorded for Grime, Silk and Thunder.
Scandal A Music Box/Ron Hardy favorite, becoming an underground force in the early 1990s and also from 1991's Blue Notes in the Basement, re-recorded with fidelity to the original on Grime, Silk and Thunder.
Free Ultra Naté's smash 1997 single after moving to Strictly Rhythm, produced by Mood II Swing and released on the album Situation: Critical. "Free" became Ultra Naté's best selling mainstream hit.
Desire Some inventive fellow on YouTube mixed the Kerri Chandler Underground Mix of Ultra's 2001 single "Desire" from the album Stranger Than Fiction into the video that was released with the radio edit. Well done!
If You Could Read My Mind Recorded by Ultra Naté as part of the Stars on 54 supergroup for the 1998 bio-pic about Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell, eventually reaching the Top 100 Billboard pop chart.
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