Had a conversation about Ms Dynamite. Me, I'm a big fan, because she says things that aren't heard very often. She's strong. It's all her and she's done it without industry contacts and without Sugababes' looks. I think it's amazing that she's out there in the public at all, let alone winning music awards... but the conversation was with a white, v privileged boy, who was dismissing her as not very good in her genre, that there are superior musicians, rappers, etc... He said, it's not like we don't already know about the things she saying...
It was a throwaway conversation so I didn't really get down to talking about this. I didn't get to point out that if something is still an issue then people will still sing about it, make art about it, write about it... Love and heartbreak are still everyday issues so we have loads of songs about that. So is racism and stereotyping and actually, very few artists deal with that or subject matter remotely related to it...
I'm writing this here, now because I wonder all the time, how do we get people to realise what's going on? It seems too easy to invalidate other voices.