Deborah Cox admits she's been MIA from the R&B scene for the past six years.
But no longer.
The Scarborough singer's latest studio album, The Promise, was released Nov. 11 on her own indie label, Deco Recording Group. She was eager to talk about it despite being six months pregnant with her third child, due in February.
"You know what, it catches up with me at the end of the day," Cox, 34, said with a sigh while relaxing in a downtown hotel bar, The Promise filling the room while people flutter around asking for autographs, a picture or if she needs anything.
"I'll probably stop for a bit," she says of her plan following the baby's arrival. "My thing is I like to keep it interesting 'cause I get bored very quickly. (But) I'm going to want to go out on the road in the spring. I can't have a new project out and not tour with it."
So far, the only 2008 Canadian dates for Cox are Dec. 15-16 at the Winter Garden Theatre, where she recently joined the lineup for The Canadian Tenors shows.
Family is clearly important to Cox, who once sang backup for Celine Dion and was later discovered when she was just out of high school by former Arista Records resident Clive Davis. At the time, her voice compared to that of Whitney Houston.
"I do music because I love music and I have a career and I'm grateful for that. But there's also (being) the mother," said Cox, who has lived with her husband/manager and Deco president Lascelles Stephens and their two young children in Miami for the past decade. "I got two kids to raise, now three (soon) and that's just as important, more important, than just the music thing."
Following her 1995 self-titled debut, which Davis executive produced, it was the song Nobody's Supposed To Be Here, from her second album, 1998's One Wish, that would make her a name and become her biggest hit, spending 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot R&B charts in the U.S. and propelling the record to platinum sales. She also won a Soul Train Award for it.
Her last studio album, 2002's The Morning After, was followed by her 2004 Broadway debut in the Elton John-Tim Rice musical Aida, and in 2007 she released a tribute to jazz singer Dinah Washington called Destination Moon which was up for a 2008 Grammy back in February.
Cox said she and Davis remain on good terms after parting ways following the release of The Morning After.
"I had a really good conversation with Clive, just about how there was a shift in the industry and it became about all the American Idols. And so I felt like, 'You know what? I need a little more creative freedom.' I really need to do more. I can't just be subject to doing just one style of record or one style of anything. I want to have the freedom to do a jazz record. So you know, we parted. He's cool with it. I'm cool with it."
She says the catalyst for her R&B return -- The Promise includes collaborations with such heavyweights as Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and John Legend and has Perez Hilton raving about the first single, Beautiful UR, on his blog -- was her fans.
Not that she's expecting a return to the heights of 1998.
"I never put pressure on it, no expectations at all, other than just putting out new music. I'm optimistic. I always like to think or hope for the best for things but I'm never like, 'Oh, this one's got to do well.' It just doesn't come to mind."
