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"   Photo: Getty Images  When R&amp;amp;amp;B singer Melanie Fiona&amp;#039;s team asks if I&amp;#039;d like to run around Fort Greene Park for my interview with the Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based musician, naturally I panic. Melanie Fiona has opened for Beyonc\u00E9, toured with Kanye West, bagged two Grammy Awards, and up next, she&amp;#039;s training for her first major race, the Nike Women&amp;#039;s Marathon in San Francisco on October 20th. And so am I, or so I should be. Call it an exercise in extreme procrastination, but I&amp;#039;ve agreed to run 26 miles without ever completing the requisite 16. Or even ten for that matter. Meanwhile, Melanie Fiona has been preparing diligently for weeks with her two trainers. Intimidating to say the least. But when Fiona arrives at the park entrance on a sweaty August morning (wearing printed running tights and day-glo kicks, her glossy black hair coiled into a topknot) she greets me with a hug. &amp;quot;I want those shoes!&amp;quot; she says, signaling my multi-colored Nike Flyknit Frees. I want to talk about marathon training, but your hair is so shiny that it&amp;#039;s actually distracting. What do you do to it? For shampoo and conditioner, I use a natural Canadian line called Surface, and I get it from the salon in my building. I also use coconut oil to help keep my hair soft and shiny and help it grow as well. You can put coconut oil on your nails and your skin, and you can cook with it. Another product I love is K\u00E9rastase Masquintense. It makes my hair feel so, so soft. I try to avoid too much heat styling. I like braiding my hair or putting it in little buns. You just take it out and it gives it that nice body. But today, since we&amp;#039;re going running, I wanted it up in a nice tight bun so I can move around without it falling.   How about your skin? It&amp;#039;s perfect.  I&amp;#039;m pretty diligent about washing my face before going to sleep every night. I really like Clinique Rinse Off Foaming Cleanser and Bliss Fabulous Foaming Face Wash. My favorite daytime moisturizer is by Yon-Ka. I&amp;#039;ve been using Kiehl&amp;#039;s Night Recovery at night because it&amp;#039;s light and it makes my skin look great in the morning. If I&amp;#039;m having a little breakout, I&amp;#039;ll go into my Murad Acne Complex Kit. I use the light acne treatment, and there&amp;#039;s a perfecting skin moisturizer that has a little salicylic acid.   Do you have a favorite foundation?  Right now, I&amp;#039;m using CoverGirl Queen line. I&amp;#039;m using golden honey because in the summer time I get a little darker and I love it. It&amp;#039;s the perfect not-too-heavy makeup. When I&amp;#039;m on stage and I&amp;#039;m a little lighter, I use Make Up For Ever, which I love.  Are those lyrics on your nails?  They are my favorite things in the whole world! They are Sally Hansen Salon Effects. They&amp;#039;re called love notes. I put them on myself. they&amp;#039;re super easy to do and they&amp;#039;re the only thing that I put on my nails because I&amp;#039;m a tomboy, and I chip my nails the minute I get a manicure.   I was reading the credits on one of your recent shoots and it said you did your own hair and makeup. Super impressed by that!  I actually still do my makeup for everything. I did my makeup for the Grammy Awards this year, and I do my makeup for all the tours. Before I became a known musician, I worked for The Body Shop. My manager was really awesome, and if we met our quota in sales for the day, he&amp;#039;d let us take whatever products we wanted to try. When I have big photoshoots, that&amp;#039;s when I call in the pros. I have a great makeup artist who also works with Janelle Mon\u00E1e, Saisha Beechum. For hair, I love Cesar Ramirez and Keith Campbell. I&amp;#039;m good with my hair though. When I was nine years old my mom told me, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to be around forever, and you need to learn how to do your own hair because you have a lot of it.&amp;quot; She taught me how to roller set my own hair.   How do you roller set your own hair?  At the time, I would wash it, put it back in a ponytail, and then I would get the rollers and put some product in each piece. Then I&amp;#039;d roll it up, and put the clamp on, bobby pin it, and then go to sleep. So at nine years old, she taught me how to sleep with this big bauble roller set of hair. And my aunt&amp;#039;s a hairdresser, so she was always the one giving me Moroccan oil and then a ceramic flat iron, so I was capable of doing it myself.  Is the Nike Women&amp;#039;s Marathon your first big run?  Yes. I&amp;#039;ve always admired people who can dedicate themselves to fitness and running because it&amp;#039;s a mental challenge. You don&amp;#039;t have to be the fastest runner, but what it takes to get up and run for a long time is really a mental challenge. I grew up playing sports. I was a distance runner when I was a kid. I did track and field and cross-country, but as I got older, I lost my love for running. I got more into strength training and overall fitness, so running was something I really wanted to get back to.   What&amp;#039;s next for you musically?  I recently released a song called &amp;quot;Cold Piece,&amp;quot; which is free for the fans. It&amp;#039;s on my Soundcloud, and it&amp;#039;s going to be a part of a bundle I&amp;#039;m putting together called Free Love. I&amp;#039;m also part of an Atlanta play this month called The Kink in My Hair, which is set in a hair salon. My monologue touches upon what we battle as mixed-race girls and how people sometimes treat us differently because of our hair. I&amp;#039;m so honored to be a part of this play and the marathon in October. I&amp;#039;m only doing things that keep me creative, happy, and healthy.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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