Rebecca Black

Rebecca Black was born on June 21, 1997, in Anaheim Hills, a neighborhood in Anaheim, California. She is the daughter of John Jeffery Black and Georgina Marquez Kelly, both veterinarians and is of Spanish, Italian, Polish, and English descent. An honor student, Black studied dance, auditioned for school shows, attended music summer camps, and began singing publicly in 2008 after joining the patriotic group Celebration USA.

In late 2010, a classmate of Black and music-video client of Ark Music Factory, a Los Angeles label, told her about the company.^[11] Black's mother paid $4,000 for Ark Music to produce her daughter's music video while the Blacks retained ownership of the master.^[9] The single, "Friday," written entirely by Ark, was released on YouTube and iTunes. The song's video was uploaded to YouTube on February 10, 2011, and received approximately 1,000 views in the first month.The video went viral on Friday, March 11, 2011, acquiring millions of views on YouTube in a matter of days, becoming the most-talked-about topic on social networking site Twitter, and garnering mostly negative media coverage. As of April 18, the video had received more than 2.1 million dislikes on YouTube compared to about 290,000 likes. As of March 22, 2011, first-week sales of her digital single were estimated to be around 40,000 by Billboard.^[15] Black appeared on the March 22, 2011 episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, during which she performed the single and discussed the negative reaction to it. The song has peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 and the New Zealand Singles Chart at number 58 and 33, respectively.In the UK, the song debuted at number sixty-one on the UK Singles Chart^.

By March 25, Black had hired a publicist and a manager. Her manager confirmed that he has been contacted by songwriters and record labels with ideas for more songs and an album.^[20] In an interview with The Sun, Black said that she is recording a new song called "LOL," which is considered for release as a single, and material for her debut album at Flying Pig Productions studio in Los Angeles.^[21] However, on her official Twitter account, Rebecca announced that the song will not be called "LOL."^[22] At least one celebrity news website reports that no new single is in the works, citing Black's manager saying "Rebecca does not have a new single titled 'LOL.' Just to be clear she does not have any new single recorded at this time." ^[23] She is currently working without a record deal. She also said that the album would contain songs with themes similar to that of "Friday", as she wants it to be "appropriate and clean." Black teamed up with Funny or Die on Friday, April 1 for April Fools Day (the site was renamed Friday or Die) for a series of videos, including one which addresses the controversy about the driving kids in her music video, stating "We so excited about safety." She has also stated that she is a fan of Justin Bieber, and expressed interest in performing a duet with him.

In response to the YouTube video of "Friday," Black began to receive death threats in late February, specifically by phone and email. While there were a number of negative, and many violent, comments on the YouTube video itself, none of the comments were specific to Black or direct in their threat of violence. These threats are being investigated by the Anaheim Police Department.

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