So how do you sell such a volcanic cross-pollination of music, especially by a relative unknown? Pre-social media and YouTube, that was a question for which Costa and her label, Virgin Records, couldn't find an answer. "The album was a crazy, well-rounded appreciation of what moved me," she says.
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#YOUTUBE NIKKA COSTA FIRST LOVE PLUS#
Costa's borderless love of music, the controlled chaos of her sound, plus the texture and agility of her voice won me over. Her father exposed her to jazz and Big Band-era standards, and she was drawn to the hip-hop grooves of the day.
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"It was kind of ahead of its time."Ĭosta's musical influences range from rock ( Led Zeppelin, The Black Crowes, Radiohead) to the "sunken soul" of Aretha Franklin, Betty Davis and Stevie Wonder. " wasn't an easy sell," Costa, 45, tells NPR Music. Why? For starters, Nikka Costa couldn't be pigeonholed. The table was set, but only a few came to feast. Everybody is sound and fury, punk and pop, jazz and soul, gospel and grind, and it deserved a slot in NPR Music's recent list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women.
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Her title track is a get-down anthem of egalitarian empowerment on it, she sings, "There's a time for every star to shine." Co-produced by wunderkind DJ Mark Ronson, Everybody Got Their Something also boasted a veritable Justice League of soul and hip-hop musicians, including Ahmir " Questlove" Thompson, Pino Palladino and James Poyser - with an assist from the late Billy Preston on what should be the wedding anthem for the new millennium: "Just Because," an R&B-influenced statement of love that trades slow-jam cliches for earthy simplicity. The album is a passionate proclamation of a woman who is shaking away fear and living her damn life, set to a musical potpourri of riffs, wails and eclectic samples. That was supposed to change in 2001 after several internationally released albums, she unveiled her American recording debut, Everybody Got Their Something. But in the United States, Nikka Costa was long considered a nobody by oft-brutal music industry standards.