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“There’s no love in this place / if you can’t accept my race,” Sklar sings on “um, no thanks” over lullabye synth washes, as if these concepts are simple enough to rock a baby to sleep. Listening to her music, I really appreciated how her songs speak so bluntly about these issues. It’s here that the album’s title, perspicacity over paradox, reveals its strength: Sklar’s experience with racism affords her insight into why achieving a “post-racial society” by ignoring race is, well, a paradox. “I want to be seen as a human being, instead of a being stripped down.” “It should be something everyone understands.” When you’re an artist of color, anything that you make that brings awareness to race is immediately labeled as political, but Sklar aims to shed that label as well.īecause for her, and many other artists like her, race isn’t political - race is everyday life. But, “It’s not a political album,” Sklar said. On “watch out”, Sklar recognizes the trappings of labels and how useless they are. Sklar with Horton, performing at the Hi-Tone for Bleeding Love: The Flow Must Go On, a charity event sponsored by Homeless Organizing for Power and Equality. I asked her about it after the show, and she was shocked. There was a particularly energetic group at the front of the crowd that knew every word, which can be a bit overwhelming for a local musician less than four months out the gate, especially considering how unprocessed and personal Sklar’s lyrics are. It felt like the fan favorite, too, seeing as the crowd went nuts everytime the beat dropped. She closed the set with “watch out”, which is actually my favorite track on the album. Her music is wavy enough to get people moving, and sultry enough to get people moving together. It was a refreshingly intimate performance. I caught one of her shows in the small room at the Hi-Tone on April 1st, and it was nearly packed out. “You just close your eyes and feel it,” Sklar said. Sklar has an Erykah Badu-like coolness to her voice, which turns the instrumentals into an abstract neo-soul experiment that would sit well in a playlist between Solange Knowles and Sampha. The album was recorded in a home studio and produced by Daniel Horton, who used elements from trap, ambient, and trip-hop to create tracks that grow and blossom, with soft synths climaxing into playful samples and dance beats. Recently, I was able to talk to her about her music, her life, and the the current electronic music scene in Memphis. It’s an album that foregoes metaphor, innuendo, and otherwise flowery language in favor of a direct, digestible message: I am a person, no matter how hard you try to say otherwise. Her debut album perspicacity over paradox, which she released in December, is exactly the kind of music I look for to write about, so I was pretty hype when a link to her SoundCloud landed in my inbox. Her music has already found loyal fans locally due to its slick production and exploration of race, womanhood, and society's stereotypes. Magnolia is 24-year-old Danielle Sklar, and she is not here for your labels. Definitely give her a listen, then read Wesley's take on her music and a quick look at the electronic music scene in Memphis. Also, the video is gorgeous in its simplicity. I'm now obsessed with her entrancing music and can't stop listening.
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Note: Want to dig deeper with an up-and-coming Memphis artist? Today, contributor Wesley Paraham does just that with Danielle Sklar, aka Magnolia.