WOMEN

13 Dec

Neneh Cherry: ‘Rap is a kind of freedom’

British female rappers, left to right: Estelle, Ms Dynamite, Neneh Cherry, Flohio, Cassie Rytz. Composite: Atlantic Records, Redferns, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Lillie Eiger Thirty years after her debut, the singer recalls how hip-hop broke the mould for British women - and we chart the rappers that followed in her path, from Cookie Crew to Cassie Rytz by Jude Rogers | The Guardian/Observer One of BBC Four’s recent Top of the Pops reruns from the late 1980s features a performance that many of us who were young girls at...
Continue reading
13 Dec

Betty Davis – ‘They Say I’m Different’ Documentary

Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She “was the first…” as former husband Miles Davis said. “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the '70s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him...
Continue reading
13 Dec

Wangechi Mutu and Carrie Mae Weems on the Profound Impulse to Make Art

Courtesy the Artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York Brussels. Photo credit Cynthia Edorh. by Carrie Mae Weems | Interview Magazine Wangechi Mutu builds worlds. In fact, the 48-year-old multimedia artistdoesn’t stop with terrestrial concerns such as material and form—she creates whole new mythologies for her vivid, ever-expanding artistic domain, in- venting radical cosmological creatures that can be seductive, monstrous, secretive, triumphant, and all-powerful, as if mating folklore with sci-fi cyborgian fantasy. Mutu has often been linked with Afrofuturism—the cultural movement that welds the iconography...
Continue reading
12 Dec

‘The narrative is we don’t sell records’: the Black female singers uncredited by the UK industry

Their vocals and songwriting feature on some of the biggest hits, but Black women are often not credited, leaving their solo careers stunted and causing them to lose out financially Elisabeth Troy, Shingai and Kelli-Leigh, three of the singers campaigning for better credit and representation in the UK industry. Composite: PR, Tom Oldham by Jumi Akinfenwa | The Guardian Through soul, funk, disco and beyond, black female vocalists stood proudly on the front of record sleeves and on stages. Then, in 1989, Italian dance...
Continue reading
8 Aug

Koffee Drops The Perfect Quarantine Love Song With “Lockdown”

by KEENAN HIGGINS | Hot New Hiphop After months of being on lockdown and social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Koffee gives the world a very relatable anthem about living it up to the fullest after this quarantine eases up. It goes without saying that many of us are completely over this global quarantine. As it looks like we may be approaching better days in the near future — keep those masks on, folks! — GRAMMY-winning reggae sensation Koffee just dropped a chune...
Continue reading
29 Nov

8-Year-Old Prodigy Drummer’s Amazing Zeppelin Cover

by Hank Shteamer | Rolling Stone Yoyoka Soma’s spot-on version of “Good Times Bad Times”--this little girl is a joy to behold!   John Bonham’s drum part in Led Zeppelin‘s “Good Times Bad Times” is one of classic rock’s most legendary grooves. And, thanks to the skipping kick-drum part in the verse, one of the trickiest to pull off. That’s just one reason we’re so impressed with the above video of eight-year-old drummer Yoyoka Soma. The young Japanese prodigy has been at it since age two,...
Continue reading
25 Nov

Meet the 10-year-old DJ taking Ghana by storm

Erica Armah Bra-Bulu Tandoh, better known as DJ Switch, is the youngest person to win the prestigious Ghana DJ award in June 2018. The 10-year-old, who began DJing a year ago, attracts hundreds of people to her shows, which feature music, singing, dancing and even horses. Despite her love of music, Erica hopes to be a gynecologist when she is older and is an advocate of education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1zLIr7Msd4 See more of DJ Switch's music on her YouTube channel ► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnm1...
Continue reading
11 Jan

Carrie Mae Weems on Her Favorite Books

Carrie Mae Weems in her library. Photo: David Paul Broda   by Jo Steffens | The Paris Review The following is excerpted from Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books, a collection of interviews with contemporary artists about their personal libraries, to be published by Yale University Press in November.   INTERVIEWER Your photographic work incorporates family stories, autobiography, documentary, and other narrative forms. What do you consider to be your role as a storyteller? CARRIE MAE WEEMS In the past I’ve employed elements of text in and around my work,...
Continue reading
11 Jan

ARTISTS AT WORK: LORNA SIMPSON

LORNA SIMPSON IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, JULY 2016. PHOTOS: VICTORIA STEVENS. HAIR: EDRIS FOR EDRIS SALON. MAKEUP: AMENAWON GREEN FOR SGRAYUNLIMITED THE AGENCY.  (Another one of the groundbreaking artists in my life; we were in the same class together at Art & Design HS.  She was always a star. <3) by William J. Simmons | INTERVIEW This summer, during group shows and ahead of fall exhibition openings, we’re visiting New York-based artists in their studios. Lorna Simpson has been at the forefront of conceptual art for over...
Continue reading
1 Dec

Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius

Getty Images/Ringer Illustration One of the greatest living artists in popular music still isn’t properly recognized. Joni transcends gender, genre and time. Here’s why.   by Lindsay Zoladz | The Ringer In one of the golden, waning years of the 1960s, Chuck Mitchell told his young wife to read Saul Bellow’s novel Henderson the Rain King. It was not a gesture of marital kindness so much as a power move: Chuck was older and more educated than Joan, and to her ears, his book recommendations always...
Continue reading
26 Nov

‘Hair Nah!’ Video Game: Don’t Touch My Hair

This Black Woman Made A Video Game After People Kept Touching Her Hair by Khalea Underwood | Refinery 29 When someone touches your hair without permission, feels happen — and not just the physical kind. It's uncomfortable. Unwarranted. Rude. Weird. Demeaning. Scary. It's easy for people to ask "what's the big deal" about the whole ordeal when they haven't experienced it themselves...
Continue reading
18 Nov

History! Nigeria’s Bobsled Team Heads to Winter Olympics

Photo: Obi Grant by Veronica Hilbring | Essence For the first time in its history, Nigeria will compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang and it’s all thanks to the women’s bobsled team. Led by driver Seun Adigun and her teammates — Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga — the bobsled team qualified in Canada after completing the fifth of the required five races. The team is the first African team to qualify in the bobsled category. Seun Adigun told Kwesé ESPN, “This is a huge milestone...
Continue reading
5 Oct

Angel Rich, “The Next Steve Jobs”

BusinessWomen Angel Rich, from Washington, DC, has developed a very innovative app called Credit Stacker that teaches students about personal finance, credit management, and entrepreneurship in a fun and engaging way. The app is so popular that 200,000 people downloaded it to their smart phones and tablets within just two weeks of it's launch. Even more, Forbes has named her "The Next Steve Jobs". Remarkably, the app has been named the "best financial literacy product in the country" by the Office of...
Continue reading
5 Oct

‘Sunrise, Sunset’ by Edwidge Danticat

Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli The New Yorker It comes on again on her grandson’s christening day. A lost moment, a blank spot, one that Carole does not know how to measure. She is there one second, then she is not. She knows exactly where she is, then she does not. Her older church friends tell similar stories about their surgeries, how they count backward from ten with an oxygen mask over their faces, then wake up before reaching one, only to find...
Continue reading
30 Jul

150 Records by African Women You Should Listen To

Muthoni the Drummer Queen. Image courtesy of the artist. by OKAYAFRICA Just like NPR and The Fader, the OkayAfrica team took a stab at listing 150 records made by amazing African for you to discover and rediscover. We hope you enjoy listening through as much as we enjoyed putting together this list of African women who’ve shaped African music from the continent and around the world. 1. Alsarah & The Nubatones (Sudan) – Manara 2. Angelique Kidjo (Benin) – Logozo 3. Asa (Nigeria) – Beautiful Imperfection 4....
Continue reading
26 Jul

Esperanza Spalding is Writing & Recording ‘Exposure’ Over 3 Day FB Livestream

by Winston Cook-Wilson | SPIN Esperanza Spalding, Grammy-award-winning singer-songwriter and jazz bassist extraordinaire (and now Harvard Professor!), has announced her new album, though she hasn’t written any songs. On September 12 at 12 p.m. Eastern, Spalding will begin writing and recording her next album, aptly titled Exposure–move over, Robert Fripp–limiting herself to a 77-hour timeframe and live-streaming the entire thing. (Yes, that includes the sleep breaks). The audience will be able to chat comments to Spalding during the process. There will be other...
Continue reading