Epiphany? No. 1 Album More a Shock for Chrisette Michele

She’s already got a Grammy, but Chrisette Michele still needed time to recover from the shock of seeing her sophomore album debut atop the Billboard charts last week. Epiphany covers new ground for the singer-songwriter, who relinquished some songwriting duties this time around to R&B singer Ne-Yo. The young artist, often compared to Billie Holiday, tells CNN that the collaboration was a real challenge at first.

“I was afraid that if somebody took the pen and the pad that it would suddenly turn into somebody else,” she says. “But he did a wonderful job of capturing Chrisette Michele and it was a beautiful experience.”