Last week I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing the beautiful and talented Melanie Fiona during the Bay Area stop of BET’s Music Matters Tour. Her set was scintillating and emotional as she recounted tales of love, pain and betrayal. She dug deep into her debut album The Bridge, but also shared some amazing new records from her forthcoming sophomore LP, The MF Life. Her first single from the project is "Gone and Never Coming Back," but "Rock, Paper, Scissors" and "Change The Record" are also amazing stand out songs.
Listening to Ms. Fiona you get the impression that you are listening to a scorned woman–a woman who has been put through the wringer by love and it's unfortunate side effects. As those of us blessed and cursed enough to have been in love know, it is indeed a roller coaster ride of extreme highs and gut-wrenching lows. But despite the ups and downs, Ms. Fiona exudes openess. Her on-stage presence makes you feel like she's looking into your eyes the entire night, and her in-person energy is warm and engaging.
We sat down after her set for an intimate conversation about her music, SXSW, the Music Matters tour, her most personal song, Oakland and living the MF Life. Most interesting was her connection to Oakland dance company New Style Mother Lode and her perspective behind living the MF Life.
"The MF Life is driven by humility. Finding the humilty in the moments that are the height of success, and the height of excitement, and the height of popularity, and joy and demand. And then it's finding the humility when you're all alone and you don't feel like you have anything or anyone, and working to get back on top... Really its the yin and the yang. My message as an artist has always been letting people know that I go through the same things they go through. Just because I'm on a stage, just because I make music, that's just my vessel..."
Watch our conversation and see this woman live if you can. Perhaps you'll catch a glimpse of why I'm crushing on her so hard. Take it away Ms.
Daps to Fred Shavies of 3680 Photography for filming the interview. Check out some of his pictures from the show here.
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1 comments:
Dope. I've been watching you Coolhand. Congrats on some really solid work. I hope we can collaborate on some things. I'm still putting out episodes of my series. The most recent one is done on Misha, a sister from Oakland, currently in Brooklyn. imbicoastal.tumblr.com (The Radical Imagination Series: Misha Ferguson)
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