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Jamie Foxx (born Eric Marlon Bishop on December 13, 1967) is an American actor, singer, and stand-up comic. Foxx is possibly best-known for his performance of musician Ray Charles in Ray, and for his collaborations with director Michael Mann. With Ray, he became one of the few African-Americans to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Jamie studied at San Diego's United States International University in music.
Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991. Here he won over viewers with many unusual characters and impressions, which included: ugly girl Wanda; fictitious boxer, Carl "The Tooth" Williams; and The Dirty Dozens champion T-Dog Jenkins. His impersonation of Garrett Morris would eventually find him starring against the former Saturday Night Live cast member in his sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show.
Jamie Foxx is a Grammy nominated singer and accomplished musician. He started playing piano at a young age, and later took classical piano lessons while attending college. In 1994, Foxx released an album (on the FOX record label) entitled Peep This. In 2001, he hosted the MTV Video Music Awards.
His music career went into a higher gear when, in 2004, he was featured on rapper Twista's song, "Slow Jamz", which also featured Kanye West. The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, as well as number three on the UK singles chart. Foxx's second collaboration with Kanye West, "Gold Digger", in which he sang the "I Got a Woman" Ray Charles-influenced hook, went straight to #1 on the Billboard Top 100, and remained there for 10 weeks straight. In 2005, Foxx was featured on the hit single "Georgia" by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob. The song sampled Ray Charles' hit "Georgia on My Mind".
Unpredictable is Jamie Foxx's second studio release. It sold over 598,000 copies in its first week but reached the U.S. number one spot in its 2nd week.
After debuting in the first week at number two, Unpredictable rose to the top of the Billboard pop album chart, with 2nd-week sales of 200,000 copies in the United States. The album also charted in the UK top 10 album chart, peaking at number nine. It has since been certified Platinum.
Foxx became the fourth artist to have won an Academy Award for acting and to have achieved a number-one record album in the US. (The other three to accomplish this feat were Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand.) Foxx's first single from the album, the title track, "Unpredictable" (featuring Ludacris) samples "WildFlower" by New Birth. The song peaked inside the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and also made the UK top 20 singles chart. The second US single from the album was "DJ Play A Love Song", which reunited Foxx with Twista. In the UK, however, the second single was "Extravaganza", which saw Foxx once again collaborate with Kanye West. He was not, however, featured in the song's music video.
At the 2006 BET Awards , Foxx won two awards: Best Duet/ Collaboration w/ Kanye West for "Gold Digger" and Video of the Year for the same video. Kanye's video tied with Mary J. Blige's (Be Without You) for Video of the year. On December 8, 2006, Foxx received a 4 Grammy nominations:
* Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for Love Changes feat Mary J. Blige.
* Best R&B Album for Unpredictable.
* Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for Georgia by Ludacris & Field Mob feat Jamie Foxx.
* Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for Unpredictable feat Ludacris.
On January 22, 2007, Foxx was on Sirius Satellite Radio, announcing his new "Foxxhole" channel. He is currently in the studio working on new material for his third album via J records.
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