Stevie Chick

3 weeks ago | mojo4music.com | Stevie Chick

London rap polymath comes out fighting on sixth album. Little Simz★★★★AWALHer 2024 Glastonbury triumph suggested Little Simz’s sixth album should’ve been a victory lap, but_Lotus_ finds her reeling from trauma. It opens with Thief, aimed at a confidant turned traitor (suggesting her legal claim against producer Inflo), its distilled anger suggesting you should endeavour to avoid Simz’s bad books. Though no other track here rages as fiercely, emotions remain raw throughout.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Stevie Chick

‘I felt like a warrior for this viscerally powerful music I heard all around me. I heard it in Richard Hell’s band at CBGB. I heard it at block parties, in the Cuban music bleeding through the walls of my Lower East Side apartment. I heard it in Haitian rara, in Croatian wedding music. I couldn’t figure out yet what all this music had in common, but I was ready to go to war for this cause.

1 month ago | independent.co.uk | Stevie Chick

PlaybackThe 1972 concert film ‘Live at Pompeii’ has been restored and remixed for cinemas and IMAX. Stevie Chick explores how it captured the band at their majestic peak of inventionThe ancient Roman city of Pompeii has witnessed some pretty intense happenings over the centuries. In AD79, the nearby Vesuvius erupted and buried the city in volcanic ash. Nearly two millennia later, another elemental force of nature flexed its might within Pompeii’s ruins.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Stevie Chick

On 13 November 1973, at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in Puerto Rico, Celia Cruz took to the stage in a bejewelled, psychedelic blue dress and vast afro, saluting the 12,500-capacity arena with her trademark rallying cry: “Azucar!” – sugar. The Cuban singer had been a star for more than two decades by this point, but this concert marked a rebirth. Backed by the Fania All-Stars, the in-house orquesta of the label that brought salsa to the US, Cruz performed Bemba Colorá.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Stevie Chick

Can you remember the precise moment you realised you had a gift as a vocalist? SalfordRed64I was doing a talent show at the Burning Spear in Chicago. My group, the Crystallettes, graced many a nightclub stage in competitions, and every time either us or [fellow Chicago girl group] the Emotions would win. But I remember singing some Aretha Franklin songs and people in the audience were throwing money on the stage, and they started calling me “little Aretha”.