Natalie "the Floacist" Stewart (born 13 February 1979) is an English rapper, singer, songwriter, spoken word artist, poet, and actress. Born in Germany and raised in London, she performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child, and rose to fame in the early 2000s as part of the R&B girl-duo Floetry. During a break, Stewart's first album, Floetic Soul (2010), was released which established her as a solo artist, with the singles "Forever" and "Let Me". Her second solo album, Floetry Re:Birth (2012), contained singles "Say Yes", "Soul" and "Speechless". In 2014, she released a third solo album, Rise of the Phoenix Mermaid. A self-described "modern-day poet", the Floacist creates songs that are often characterized by themes of love, relationships,and inspiration, as well as problems and solutions. In a career spanning 16 years, she has sold over 2 million records. Early life Stewart is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. With her father in the British Armed Forces, she was born in Germany, the youngest of three children, and started school in Hong Kong. After her father left the army, the family settled in London. She attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, where Marsha Ambrosius was studying business and finance. Stewart studied performing arts, media and art. She attended Middlesex University, and later transferred to the University of North London. She was a founding member of the performance poetry group 3 Plus 1, which was critically well received in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Stewart found her true calling on the performance poetry scene, where she was able to naturally merge all of her artistic expressional outputs as a writer and performer. This led to the manifestation of her Floetic ethos of "poetic delivery of musical intent". Career 1999–2006: Floetry Floetry was formed after Ambrosius joined her on stage in 1999 to perform at a spoken word night called Poets vs MC's, where they debuted a piece that they had written together called "Fantasize", combining spoken word and singing. In 2000, they went to the United States to perform on the poetry circuit. After frequenting spoken word/poetry spots in Atlanta, such as Yin Yang Poets' Cafe, they went to Philadelphia where they met Darren "Limitless" Henson and Keith "Keshon" Pelzer of DJ Jazzy Jeff's Touch of Jazz studio and began recording. In 2002, they signed with DreamWorks Records and released their first album, Floetic, which included the