Maysa Leak's hug is warm and tight.
"Come in," she says, directing you through her well-appointed living room filled with stylish cream furniture and gleaming dark wood tables. The acclaimed jazzy soul singer grew up in this spacious split-level house, which sits on a quiet tree-lined street in Gwynn Oak. When she's not on the road, the artist lives here with her mother, a homemaker and part-time caterer, and her 8-year-old son, Jazz. Maysa (she goes by just her first name) settles in the cozy kitchen, where she chats about her nearly 20-year career under the radar.
"I think this is gonna be the one to do it, to take me to that next level," the artist says, referring to Metamorphosis, her sublime new album released last week.
Maysa, who headlines the Lyric Opera House on Sunday night, is a jewel in the backyard, so to speak. The Baltimore native is perhaps best-known as the featured vocalist for Incognito, the London-based urban-fusion collective spearheaded by the great Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick. The group reached its commercial peak about the time Maysa joined the fold in the early '90s. Those are her rich, chocolate-and-coffee vocals heard on the 1994 hit "Deep Waters," which still gets regular spins on adult urban and smooth jazz stations.
Although Maysa still sings with Incognito off and on (in fact, she's featured on the group's latest album, this year's excellent Tales From the Beach), she has been cultivating a solo career for 13 years. Since 1995, the singer-songwriter has released six albums, including two cover projects for the New Jersey indie label Shanachie Entertainment. The last one, 2007's Feel the Fire, made its debut in the Top 30 on Billboard's R&B charts, higher than Maysa's previous releases. But for her follow-up album with Shanachie, she wasn't interested in reimagining soul evergreens from the '70s and '80s.
"I just had to get my expression out," says the singer-songwriter, 42. Although she's outfitted in black workout clothes, Maysa is in diva mode from the neck up: Her makeup is immaculate, and thick hair extensions cascade down her arms and back. "I enjoyed doing the [covers], but I didn't want to do any more. I had some things I wanted to say in my own music."
But beyond the music, she wanted to make a personal metamorphosis.
"When this whole project started, I was gonna lose weight and come out reinvented like a Madonna thing. Then I found myself eating cheeseburgers," she says, between throaty bursts of laughter. "I didn't know what was going on."
