Singer-songwriter Marsha Ambrosius tried to make up with her ex-Floetry bandmate Natalie Stewart twice in the past two years, but events that occurred on the road led Ambrosius, who currently enjoys a solo career, to nix Stewart for good.
British duo Floetry enjoyed success in the mid-1990s as songwriters before releasing their own music, including the hit “Say Yes.” Ambrosius, “The Songstress,” parted ways with Stewart, “The Floacist,” in 2006 before the pair embarked on a reunion tour in 2015.
“We did two years back-to-back of a reunion tour,” Ambrosius told The Breakfast Club Thursday, May 4. “On my end, it was absolutely to reconcile, forgive, bury the hatchet and clean-slate everything with anticipation to possibly move on to further things.”
Ambrosius said she tried to make amends on both years of the tour, the final time being in 2016, and neither attempt was successful.
Ambrosius, who stopped by to discuss her new single, “Luh Ya,” found out she was pregnant with her daughter and since her doctor told her it was high risk, Ambrosius disallowed smoking on the tour bus. She later disclosed her pregnancy to Stewart, who replied she already “figured it out” without congratulating Ambrosius on the news.
“I left that at that. Petty, petty in me,” Ambrosius says. ” ‘Okay, I’ll leave it at that, whatever.’ Eventually, congratulations came into order.”
On the last day of the tour, Ambrosius was sitting with her fiancé, Dez Billups, and Stewart’s then-manager when they noticed Stewart was lighting up.
“‘What’s that smell’ ?” Ambrosius recalls saying. “Smoking at the back of the bus. That’s the nail in the coffin. That’s the closure I needed to affirm that you just won’t be able to get right with me.”
A year earlier, Ambrosius explained she met Billups, who had been working with Floetry, and they went to a diner to get to know each other. While they were together, a message from a band member to Billips arrived on the walkie-talkie app Zellow.
“On the loudspeaker, it’s like, ‘Yo Dez, you ain’t f— yet?’ ” Ambrosius says, noting she encouraged the messages to keep coming through. “Another band member chimes in and is like, ” ‘Yo, you ain’t pop that? You know she f—– everybody in Philly?’ … And then another one chimes in and it’s [Stewart]: ‘Yeah, Dez.’
“It didn’t even matter at that point. It was co-signing everyone else’s lies,” Ambrosius says before later declaring those rumors weren’t true. “I let it go but then, what they wouldn’t understand is, I then had to get on stage every night with these band members … guys are gonna be guys, so I can let that slide. But her? Not so much.”
Ambrosius said she was “loyal to a fault” to Stewart ahead of their 2006 split, which led her to keep Stewart’s alleged abusive relationship a secret from friends and family.
