Genoa – You know how he reacted Ice Spice, rapper born in 2000, proudly daughter of the Bronx, when Drake, a hip hop giant, seemed to have taunted her by saying “it’s better to listen to it in silence”? She immediately asked, with personality and pride, for an explanation as to why those unjustly poisonous phrases. She grew up on the street, in a melting pot of cultures, she has no awe for anyone. Even if you have one of the most important and famous artists in the world in front of you. Someone who, with a diss track, can destroy a career. Ice Spice took the issue by the hair and demonstrated, even with her music, what she’s made of. The result? Today the Toronto rapper is one of her first supporters. With that magical orange bush on her head and with an irreverent tongue, Isis Gaston, this is her real name, on the wave of riotous and uninhibited songs, she has reached everyone’s lips.
His “Boy’s a liar Pt.2”, created with colleague PinkPantheress, has nearly 150 million plays on Spotify and boasts millions of creations on TikTok. In the video, which has already become iconic, armed with a handbag, she dances without brakes and raps: “men are liars and petty”. Someone will think with a grin: dear Drake, are your ears ringing?.
Ice Spice is one of the many young women in the music world who is rewriting today with her inspiration, becoming a source of inspiration for all those girls who don’t want to lower their heads. An open and just war on the gender gap, or rather on that gap, also present in the music industry, which creates economic, access and support disparities between men and women, to the detriment of the latter. There are the numbers to prove it: in the American Billboard chart of the 100 most successful songs between 2012 and 2020, women represented only 2.6%. On this March 8, Women’s Day, we celebrate eight new generation young artists who, with an Amazonian spirit, are opening the gates of light thanks to awareness, talent and desire for emancipation.
Last December there was a symbolic moment, in the first date in Italy of her career, in a sold out Forum in Milan, in which Rosalía sat astride a motorcycle made up of eight human bodies, eight male dancers. A cinematic image that has never been reserved not even for the ruthless Daenerys Targaryen in “Game of Thrones”. Spanish, born in 1992, with just three albums she changed music and sound around the world, creating a revolutionary bridge between Latin rhythms, traditional flamenco and r&b. Almost as if she were a goddess of an ancient time, during the concerts she sings, dances, plays the piano, the guitar, twerks wildly, invokes her Spain, moving to tears and condemns the policies that deny rights and freedoms.
On the one hand the disappointments of love, on the other the fight against the dark side of success, with a heartfelt tribute to Princess Diana: SZA’s latest album, released last December, made everyone agree. The second disc by Solána Imani Rowe, an American from New Jersey, is a jewel, which has dominated the US charts, in which love is told in a tormented and existentialist way, but never faced in a submissive or submissive way. A manifesto. Supporter of human rights, activist against racism against the African American community, SZA is one of the most relevant R&B artists of recent years. It’s not everyone who writes the soundtrack to “Black Panther” with rap prophet Kendrick Lamar.
Undisputed champion of techno, DJ and producer Charlotte de Witte, born in 1992, has been the absolute number one in the top hundred of world DJs for two years. Born in Ghent, a north-western Belgian port city, Charlotte made her debut at a very young age in 2010 and contributed to definitively breaking an almost ancestral taboo for the people of the night, namely that of the woman behind the console. Since 2017, de Witte, who recently played in Genoa in a mega event by Rst Events, has performed in practically all the festivals dedicated to electronics and not only internationally. “To the female DJs who ask me for advice, I always repeat: think about the music, not about those around you,” she said. Filling roles erroneously considered only “male” with preparation and merit is a true checkmate to prejudice. The bassist knows something about it Victoria DeAngelis, beating and musical heart of Måneskin. Is she the Kim Gordon of Generation Z? Comparisons with rock giants always leave the time they find, everyone is the child of their own historical period, but one thing is certain: the Roman artist, in her early twenties, has become a driving force. Her Danelectro Longhorn bass has seen a surge in sales. And to buy it are almost all very young people who dream of her career. Victoria also loves to transform her naked body into an anti-bigoted message: «We are too hot for US TV. It’s stupid because they want to look so open and then they freak out about a pair of nipples. This difference between the male and female bodies is ridiculous: everyone has nipples.”
The most listened to woman on Spotify in the last ten years in Italy is Madame. Twenty-one years old, starting from little Creazzo, in Veneto, she overturned rap machismo by establishing herself as an artist and songwriter. Before her there had never been, in the urban world, a woman with this attitude. On the question of the false green pass obtained without an anti-Covid vaccine, for which she is still being investigated, she fell. In life, mistakes are made and it can happen even when the weight of responsibility is greater. But she has inspired and continues to inspire young people like few other female voices and in her new album “L’amore” she will try to surpass herself, following the school of her beloved De André, that is, telling the stories of various marginalized characters. There is another name that stands out on the lips of so many girls of Generation Z. It is that of Bea Kristi, born in 2000, born in the Philippines and raised in London. Her project is called Beabadoobee. Taylor Swift, madly in love with her mix of rock and pop with echoes that bring back the 90s, wants her to open her next tour in the United States. Like your colleague Billie Eilish, who at just 21 is one of the most influential artists in the world for her ability to put youthful discomfort into music, rails against labels and misogyny. Just the voice of “Bad guy” recently declared: «If I wear what is comfortable, I’m not a woman. If I undress, instead I’m a whore. All this crap has to stop.” Beabadoobee and Eilish are relevant not only for the quality music they make and for the positions they take, but also for what they represent: starting from their bedroom, recording their first songs without great expectations, they got there. To take the sky. All. Other than a single half, the one in which many men would like to relegate them.