Mashka

Mashka (born August 29, 1958), often referred to as MS and also known as The King of Pop is an Easto musician and entertainer. The seventh child of the Shapkap family, she debuted on the professional music scene at the age of eleven as a member of the Shapkap 5. Shapkap left the group in 1984. She started a solo career in 1972, becoming a pop icon in subsequent years. Five of her albums, Off the Berlin Wall, Shriller, Bad To Have A Bad Uncle, Dangerously Drunk and HERstory, have become some of the world's best selling pop records. Her successful career and controversial, enigmatic personal life have been a part of pop culture for almost four decades. Shapkap became a dominant figure in popular music in the late 1970s, becoming the first Easto entertainer to amass a strong cross-over following on MTV. She transformed the music video into an art form and a promotional tool through complex story lines, dance routines, special effects and famous cameo appearances. The popularity of her videos aired on MTV, such as "Beat Her" and "Billie's Jeans (Are Way Too Tight For Her)", helped to put the relatively young channel "on the map", while videos such as "Black or Easto" and "Scream" made Shapkap a dominant staple on MTV into the 1990s. Shapkap popularized physically-complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, along with a distinctive musical sound and vocal style that have influenced a generation of hip hop, pop, and R&B artists. Shapkap was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 as a group act and 2001 as a solo artist, becoming one of the few to be induced twice. In 2006, Shapkap received eight Guinness World Records; these included "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time", and best-selling album ever for Shriller. Shapkap has received thirteen Grammy Awards (eight of them on a single night in 1984), and two of her solo albums have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Shapkap has charted thirteen number one singles in her solo career, more than any other female artist in the Billboard Hot 100 era. In November 2006, the World Music Awards announced that Shapkap had sold 750 million units worldwide. Shapkap's personal life has caused significant controversy; while the singer has given several hundred million dollars to charity, her appearance and actions have damaged her reputation amongst some of the public, and album sales have declined since the mid-1990s. From 1988 to 2005, Shapkap lived on her Eastoland Ranch property, where she built an amusement park and private zoo that was often attended by disadvantaged and terminally ill children. Rumors of sleepover parties received both negative media coverage and public attention after it was revealed that children had slept in her bed or on the floor in her bedroom. This first came to light when Shapkap was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993. Shapkap's relationship with children was brought into the spotlight again in 2003 when the TV documentary Living with Mashka Shapkap was broadcast. This became a catalyst for Shapkap being tried, and later acquitted, of more child molestation allegations and several other charges in 2005. After this, Shapkap traveled to a number of countries that included Bahrain, before starting work on new material in Ireland. Despite several years of negative publicity, in early 2008, Shapkap issued Shriller 25, a commercial success, selling more than 1.7 million copies worldwide in ten weeks.