LaKisha Jones: "I won't let you down"

To say that LaKisha Jones is busy would be an understatement. The Season Six finalist’s debut album, “So Glad I’m Me,” comes out Tuesday, her baby is due in August and she’s still a newlywed, having just married Larry Davis in October.

But fortunately, LaKisha was able to find a few minutes to talk to me about the new album and of course, “American Idol”…

“Sometimes I don’t know what I was thinking taking all these things on at the same time,” LaKisha told me. “The album comes out Tuesday, the baby comes out in August. I already have a six-year-old. I just got married. I am busy, busy, busy.”

But LaKisha knows that it’s a good kind of busy, and she’s excited to see the album hit stores. “I can’t wait until Tuesday comes. I want to go into the store and buy my CD. It will feel so good to do that,” she said.

“I’m excited that finally the CD is coming out, that my message is coming out. I hope it takes us straight to the top.”

LaKisha describes the CD as “a mixture of R&B, gospel and pop all-in-one. It’s the storybook of my life. [The songs] are little chapters. Things going on in my life, things I’ve gone through. The album is titled ‘So Glad I’m Me’ and it’s titled that because I’m glad to be who I am and I hope everyone who buys it, they’re glad to be who they are.”

LaKisha told me the message she hopes to convey with the album is “a message of hope. Everything I went through, all of those things, they all make me who I am. It all makes me stronger.”

We know from LaKisha’s time on “Idol” that she’s more than capable of taking on a Whitney Houston song. But I was curious why she chose “You Give Good Love” as the Whitney song to cover for her album. “[“Love”] was from Whitney Houston’s first album and she’s had a lot of success. It’s my tribute to Whitney and hopefully I’ll do the same.”

After talking about the album, I turned the conversation toward “Idol” and it’s obvious that LaKisha has no shame about being associated with the show. “I’m forever a part of that family. I am really blessed to have had that opportunity, so I have no problem with it at all.”

LaKisha said that fans ask her about the show all the time and she tells them, “What you see is what it is. The judges are how they are on TV.”

So what’s the most popular question she gets about the show? “Who’s your favorite judge? And I always say Simon. He was really rooting for me.” She just laughed when I told her that of course she’d pick Simon because she got to kiss him.

She also admits that there are things that she learned during her “Idol” experience that she still uses today. “People had more confidence in LaKisha than LaKisha had in herself.” She said that now she’s much more confident and is really “learning who I am.”

When I asked you guys what questions you would like to ask LaKisha, I had one friend say “Tell her I love her.” He was only kidding, but when I got the opportunity, I told her that very thing and she was truly flattered and responded “Tell [him] I love him too.”

I then asked her what message she would like to give to him and the rest of her fans. She responded, “I know it’s been a long time coming, but LaKisha is back. I won’t let you down. This is only the beginning.”

“So Glad I’m Me” hits stores Tuesday, May 19th…

Photo Credit: Elite Music, LLC