Creativity Quote by Deborah Cox

What reads like a casual bit of wish-listing is actually a small masterclass in career signaling. Deborah Cox isn’t just naming two titles; she’s naming a lane. Dreamgirls and Sparkle are shorthand for a very specific Black-pop lineage: big vocals, glamorous struggle, backstage melodrama, and a kind of star-making machinery that turns pain into performance. By saying she “wanted” Dreamgirls, Cox positions herself as an artist built for that canon, someone whose instrument and persona naturally belong in narratives about women who sing their way through ambition, betrayal, and reinvention.

The second sentence does even more work. “If they’re doing a stage production of Sparkle” is speculative, but “I think that would be hot” turns it into a soft pitch: cast me, call me, let’s make this happen. The word “hot” is doing double duty: commercially viable, culturally alive, sexy in the way a revival can feel when it hits the right moment. It also implies she’s thinking like a producer as much as a performer, attuned to what audiences would pay to see.

Context matters here: Cox came up in an era when powerhouse R&B singers were often treated as voices without vehicles. Musical theater offers both legitimacy and longevity, plus a chance to be centered in a story rather than orbiting someone else’s pop moment. It’s aspiration, yes, but also strategy.