I do know somewhere down the line there were some friendships. I feel like we knew some of the Mafia but were not involved for sure. Growing up Italian, did you ever fake having Mafia ties to appear tougher? I didn’t have to fake anything…I’m kidding. What was your family like growing up? My family was the stereotypical poker-playing, loud, friendly, food-shoving, loving, Italian family. I miss my grandparents the most, and the beach. How often do you go back to Boca? I barely get to go back home anymore.

It’s a coup of charisma that explains why Grande was sought out and signed by Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, today’s pop music Midas. Off the mic, in the cut, her voice shifts from teen-sitcom-star singsong to a snappy, serrated Italian lilt. That voice has attacked pop radio this year like a drone strike. She’s got one of those feel-good voices we haven’t heard in a long time.” “Her tone is golden and it just feels good. “I love her voice,” says R&B legend Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds who produced her debut album, Yours Truly, which topped the Billboard charts last August. Why play it cool? There’s no need to act the part of the jaded pop star when you’re winning.Įven if the menopausal women and midlife-crisis-stricken men surrounding Grande at lunch aren’t fussing over her, the music industry is, thanks to a seemingly superhuman vocal range weaponized in her five-foot frame. Her smile is little-sister cute, and she flashes it often. She was on Broadway at age 13 and had a role on Nickelodeon’s Victorious in 2010, before she began starring on Sam & Cat in late 2012. But this isn’t Ariana Grande’s first rodeo.

1 album in three years would demand a flashier arrival. You might imagine that the first female singer to post a No. As throngs of middle-aged women and studio execs scrape the remnants of their hummus boards, a petite 20-year-old brunette in a distressed sweater slips through the door and slides into the first corner banquette. It’s the midday rush at Olive & Thyme, a Burbank, Calif. Ariana Grande has a pretty face and a golden voice, but the chart-topping sitcom star has a dark side, too.

Without a shadow of a doubt ghost