RECENT ARTICLES

At first, Florence LaRue didn’t want to be in the famous R&B group from the ‘60s and ’70s, The 5th Dimension—a band that was also recently reintroduced to audiences thanks to the recent documentary, Summer of Soul, from The Roots’ famed drummer Questlove. She’d just won a beauty pageant—the Miss Bronze California contest—and one of the group’s founders, Lamonte McLemore, had approached her but she declined, thinking McLemore would have asked anyone who’d won the contest. So, she sloughed him off.

At the time, LaRue was in school, in the final year of getting her bachelor’s degree. She was also working full-time. So, she told McLemore that she wouldn’t even be able to make many rehearsals. But he persisted and eventually, LaRue acquiesced. The rest is music history. But none of this would have happened, LaRue says, if it hadn’t have been for the actress (and former Catwoman) Eartha Kitt.

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Sebastián Yatra is a heartthrob superstar. He’s also a darn fine songwriter. Yatra, who was born in Colombia and raised in Miami, Florida, now has legions of fans numbering in the tens of millions. He’s collaborated with the Jonas Brothers, covered Elvis Costello, with the singer’s blessing, and he’s currently on tour with Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin, idols who Yatra looked up to as a kid.

Now, though, he’s sharing their same air. This is what comes when you’re a Latin Grammy Award-nominated artist, what follows you when you garner millions of song streams in a matter of days. Yatra, who released his most recent hit, “Tarde,” two weeks ago, even more recently earned a Latin Grammy nomination for his earlier 2021 single, “Adios.” That song, which has its own unique backstory, came to the artist in a matter of moments.

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Portland, Oregon-born, Grammy-winning musician, Esperanza Spalding, remembers walking the dog with her mother. In fact, it’s her first memory. During the excursion, Spalding remembers asking her mother to harmonize with her, trying to turn multiple tones into something more. It made sense for the young child who begged her parents to play Harry Belafonte’s and Stevie Wonder’s Christmas albums year-round. She says another turning point in her early life was hearing a Bach cello suite on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It gave her the chills, even then. Some few decades later, Spalding is a towering figure in music, with both street cred and Harvard University props, multiple Grammy Awards, and now a new LP, Songwrights Apothecary Lab, out today (September 24).

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New Orleans-based, booming-voiced artist, Big Freedia, knows life in all its glory, terror and variety is, in the end, about balance. So, to keep her own mind balanced during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Freedia took to two main outlets: cooking and recording music. For the former, Freedia took to social media and YouTube to produce modest-though-beloved cooking videos, showing viewers how she makes various favorites, like biscuits. For the former, Freedia wrote and recorded in the studio and has since recently made that work public, releasing her latest EP, Big Diva Energy, earlier in September. The album, which comes on the heels of her 2020 EP, Louder, is itself a triumphant exercise in balance. On the EP, Freedia discusses both personal boundaries and fun, food-based gluttony.

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Radiant Tennessee-born singer-songwriter, Valerie June, is resourceful, especially energetically. Speaking with the conscientious musician, it’s quick to see she’s as caring about ideas as she is talented, as aware of tone and feeling as she is technicality or intellect. It’s this mood that she brings to collaborations and cooking sessions with stars like Norah Jones—the two hung out and made music and meals together recently—and the mood June brings to playing stages like the Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival, which she will perform at on September 25, now her third time at the fest. But, for June, it’s often about making the most of these moments—whether they’re in person or at home in hibernation—and learning how they can better inform the present and future days that’s significant.

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