Butterscotch
Go ahead. Google “Butterscotch”. Or search for it on Wikipedia. You might find one entry for the MySpace page of a young girl from Sacramento, California, Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton. Her MySpace page says she is an internationally recognized beatbox artist and that may be so, but a web search brings only one or two hits for her name. That is surely soon to change. A bright star on America’s Got Talent is Butterscotch.
A classical-piano major at California State University-Sacramento, the 21-year-old Clinton hopes to teach beatboxing and see it offered as a university major. A winner at the 2005 Hip Hop World Challenge, she now works with Verizon’s new online beatbox mixer (www.beatboxmixer.com).
“One of my biggest idols growing up was Michael Jordan,'’ says Clinton, whose love for basketball almost matches her love for music. “I always wanted to be in the NBA, the first girl in the NBA. Then they made the WNBA.'’ Clinton says that angered her at first because it meant that she would not be allowed in the NBA, but she later felt the WNBA allowed women to be empowered. (source)
It will be fun watch this summertime hit and see how well she does. So far, she’s managed to add to each performance. She’s got something special and I think she made a wise decision to showcase her talents on this show.
Update:
Public Radio interview back in 2005 and replayed on 7-13-07
June 2007 comment by Chris Macias, Sacramento Bee’s pop music critic, at his blog, BeatNonStop. Seems he’s known about her talents for a while:
I also got a copy of The Local Slice, a ‘zine published by KSSU radio. And look at this: the cover story was on Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton, a world champion beat-boxer who I profiled in 2005. All of that music making with her mouth has evidently led to an increasingly rising career. Lately she’s been part of Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom project, which on record features Norah Jones, Bebel Gilberto and members of Massive Attack. She even joined Peeping Tom on stage at the recent Coachella festival. Butterscotch has also been collaborating with indie hip-hop favorite Pigeon John and was booked on the Tom Green Live. You go, Butterscotch!
