Audio: #NewsOneNow (@RolandSMartin) Interviews @AntoniqueSmith [2.11.2014]

Entertainer Antonique Smith joined Roland Martin to discuss her upcoming album and work to restore music programs in schools through VH1’s Save The Music.

You may know Smith from Broadway’s Rent or from her role as Faith Evans in 2009′s Notorious, but she’s also engaged in the fight to rebuild arts programs in our nation’s public schools. Smith calls arts instruction a fundamental issue within education.

“[The arts] help you to become a more well-rounded person,” she says. “It helps your brain. It just helps you learn. I feel like music is the soundtrack to our lives, so I feel like people wouldn’t develop the same way that we developed because we had music in school. I played the recorder. I played the bells. Actually, that’s how I got my start. That’s where I got my initial practice as a singer and an actress.”

Listen to more of Smith’s interview below & hear a bit of her new single “Hold Up Wait A Minute (Woo Woo)“: