You’re gonna love Sirah.
It’s not that her new EP, Inhale, is all that groundbreaking in a technical sense. It’s not because her five-foot frame and candy-colored hair make the guttural raps emerging from her throat even more shocking. It’s not even the fact that she shares a Grammy with Skrillex for “Bangarang”, a collaboration between the two.
It’s because her music – notably the tracks on Inhale – makes you feel like you really can drop everything and just dance.
Take the EP’s title track. If M.I.A., Santigold, and Nicki Minaj collaborated for a day (a girl can dream, right?), this is what they’d come up with. My only question? Why, oh why, wasn’t this song released at the beginning of the summer? Heavy pop beats pair with lyrics that are already making me nostalgic for flirty summer nights. And there’s no way to talk about this track without mentioning that voice – it’s primal, deep, and powerful, a welcome change in her genre.
“On To The Next” is the standout track in my eyes. It’s catchy and danceable, but in less of a Miley Cyrus, Top 40 radio kind of way. It’s slower, which I prefer, but I can easily envision the hundreds of remixes that will warp this track through and through. Mark my words: the rave kids are gonna eat this one up.
A few more tracks follow in a similar way, but I’m more interested in the EP’s final two songs: “You Know You Want It” and “First Impressions”. Here, Sirah sheds her fairly obvious desire for pop fame and bares her rap skins. Between slow, electronic piano riffs, Sirah croons lines like, “I’m not the prettiest but I do spit pretty hard.” Sirah, I can’t say I disagree.
*Be sure to snag yourself a copy of this EP, out now!
Kate Foster is a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated titles: writer. Blogger. Beauty and fashion junkie. Cat devotee. Art history buff. Harry Potter nerd. Cheesy 90's television fan. Sometimes-gamer. Seasonal sculptor. Mostly she’s a music enthusiast. While her heart and soul belong to 50's and 60's crooners like Etta James, Sam Cooke and Elvis Presley, one shouldn’t be surprised to find her listening to Lady Gaga or Jay-Z. Most days, though, she’s in an indie-punk mood somewhere in between - she counts the Pixies, the White Stripes, M83, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs as a few of her favorites. And while you’ll typically see her bobbing her head calmly at concerts, occasionally she pulls out all the stops for bands like the Black Lips. She treasures her bruises like a child. After graduating from the University of Georgia with degrees in Journalism and Art History, Kate aspires to move to New York City. There, she hopes to continue to write. She also plans on pretending to understand the art at MoMA and stuffing her face with cronuts and one dollar pizza. Kate’s heroes range from Oscar de la Renta and Mindy Kaling to Ernest Hemingway and Rupert Giles. She practically inhales iced coffee on a daily basis. Her favorite color is yellow, and like Buddy the Elf, she considers candy a major food group. She has dreams almost every night involving the coolest architecture and interior design, and has no idea what it means. Seriously, what does that mean?!