In her own way and time, Donn T's debut

Donn T has been kicking around the music industry for as long as her brother has.

Not to slight her sibling, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson - drummer for Philly's hip-hop giants the Roots - but she's as eclectic as he is, too.

Ms. T has coauthored tracks with Common, covered Radiohead tunes, placed her music in sound tracks for TV series, and had a folksy soul act - the Day - that toured the globe. Like her brother, Donn T as a child was often a part of Lee Andrews and the Hearts, her dad's doo-wop stage act.

It's only now that Donn T has recorded her debut: the lo-fi house and minimalist electro-dance Kaleidoscopic. It's scheduled for July release through British-based label MoreAboutMusic. Some might well ask: What took so long for Kaleidoscopic to drop? Could Donn T's family have done anything to speed things along? But for the independent Ms. T, Kaleidoscopic is right on schedule.

"What was applauded in my family was that each of us made our own path in our own way in our own given time," Donn T says from the living room of her mother's Philly waterfront apartment. "So much of who I am is about growing up in a family that's musical, free, and eccentric. Besides, I see myself as much as a writer as I do a musician and vocalist. I might write a novel after this. Being a recording artist is just one piece of the puzzle."

Grace in the way Donn T moves reveals a dance background. "I can shuffle-ball-change," she says with a laugh, referring to a move learned from her mother, Jacqui Thompson, a ballerina turned tapping hoofer who also sang as part of Lee Andrews' traveling circus with their kids. That was the family business (the parents have since divorced). Donn T got her first taste of the playing-out life with Andrews' touring revue during summers away from school.

"We became working-class musicians after Dad's '50s hits got stretched to become part of the revival-concert biz in the '70s and '80s," she says.

She speaks wistfully but frankly about her father's disappointment with audiences during his first volley of success. He was an elegant African American crooner with a Nat "King" Cole-like style; his tastes ran toward standards and country. "He was frustrated that he didn't have a huge black audience in his perspective," Donn T says. "Then again, when my brother came on to the scene with the Roots - real musicians playing hip-hop live rather than using tracks - he had a hard time winning people over."

Donn T understands some of the reasons audiences and record executives have sometimes had a difficult time getting her music. Throughout the late '90s and early 2000s, she tried to sell the "visionary acoustic soul" of the Day to major labels, to no avail. "It was fun while it lasted," she says, "but people expected me to rap when all I wanted to do was my thing - first the folk, now the electronic stuff."

?uestlove knows how determined his sister can be. "We're both stubborn in our own ways," says the drummer from a barber's chair in the bowels of NBC Studios in Manhattan. "She knows what she wants."

Getting a trim before heading to a sound stage for his day job - house band for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon - ?uestlove happily recalls his sister's strong musical tastes and skills, and how both things influenced him. If not for her, he says, he wouldn't have known the joys of AM radio pop and FM faves from David Bowie to Led Zeppelin: "She can listen to a record and start singing the seventh harmony; real Stravinsky Rite of Spring stuff. That's not even in the realm of most people's possibilities."

The drummer certainly supports what his sister does. ?uestlove lent his small studio on North Seventh Street to Donn T and collaborator Sinbad to record a new album in a whirlwind eight-day session. "The board blew up and we had to jerry-rig our own thing," she jokes. ?uestlove brought her into his side project, the Randy Watson Experience, to cover "Morning Bell" for Exit Music: Songs With Radio Heads. He also made her part of his production and writing team for Common's 2002 album Electric Circus.

How about helping her out on a label deal or getting a major studio to record the brilliant (in his estimation) Kaleidoscopic? "There's no need for that," ?uestlove says with a laugh, stressing his sister's independent ways of making music and finding a home for it. "Besides, I'm a lover of electro-dance music but not an expert. I would hate the guilt of dropping the ball on something so easy."

While finding a home for her music, Donn T happened onto house and electro. Around the same time as Electric Circus, she began looking to license her songs for commercials and film. "A producer at Showtime liked my acoustic stuff but heard something more spacey in my sound," she says. After never having worked to tracks or with sequencers, she started adding atmospheric Portishead-like music to her repertoire, produced tunes for the Showtime series Street Time, and found her calling.

She jumped between the United States and the U.K., absorbing influences from dubstep to micro-house, and made tracks with several underground producers. But it took her DJ friends in Philly's house scene to introduce her to French producer Sinbad, in town at one of Lee Jones' signature "Sundae" parties. "I speak a tiny bit of French so we were able to hang, chat, and agree to work on music," says Donn T. "Eight days later, we were done with Kaleidoscopic with all new songs. We did it so fast I couldn't tell what was coming first; beats, lyrics, or music."

The quietly psychedelic melodies and minimalist arrangements of songs like "Astro Lovah," with subtle electronic bleeps and honeyed vocals, have the feel of something funky, fresh, and improvisational. But in "Authenticity," she espouses the music industry's golden rule about never believing your own press.

"My parents and my brother echo these sentiments at least weekly - it's what keeps me grounded," she says.

Whether it's the old-school teachings of her family or the new-school electro of her debut, Donn T says there's one main thing to know about Kaleidoscopic: "I'm on a mission; my mission."