Mark Ronson f/ Keyone Starr - "I Can't Lose"
Jan 13, 2015 14:07:10 GMT -5
Post by Live Your Life on Jan 13, 2015 14:07:10 GMT -5
From his new album, "Uptown Special." This is one of my favorites on the album. I googled the singer's name because I like her voice, and a Billboard article came up with Mark explaining how the collaboration come to fruition:
I hope she gets signed.
And then there’s the story behind Keyone Starr, the unknown 23-year-old who sings alongside Grammy winners and platinum sellers on Uptown Special. One of her cuts is a soul workout that interpolates the stutter-step beat from SOHO’s house classic “Hot Music.” Of another Keyone track, “I Can’t Lose," Ronson says, “We wanted a young Chaka Khan on it, but there just wasn’t anybody coming to mind. Jeff was like, 'We’re going to drive down to the South, we’re going to call it the Mississippi Mission, and go to the churches.’ It was a wild idea that became a reality.”
Filming the journey as they went along, Ronson and Bhasker drove up the Mississippi River over the course of nine days, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Jackson, St. Louis, Little Rock, and up to Chicago. They scouted choir singers at churches, local community centers, and side rooms of sports bars, where “Lil Wayne would be blasting through the glass doors,” Ronson says. “People were trying to sing as loud as they could over the music that was coming through. We saw so many great singers.”
In Jackson, at Mississippi State University, they found Starr, a preacher’s daughter with a big spiky earring. She'd been shunned from her church after getting pregnant. “She just looked so badass. I remember thinking: it would be awesome if this one could sing really great,” Ronson says. “She just opened her mouth and she had it instantly. I’m so drawn to singers with rasp and something broken in their voice, where you really hear the rawness.”
Filming the journey as they went along, Ronson and Bhasker drove up the Mississippi River over the course of nine days, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Jackson, St. Louis, Little Rock, and up to Chicago. They scouted choir singers at churches, local community centers, and side rooms of sports bars, where “Lil Wayne would be blasting through the glass doors,” Ronson says. “People were trying to sing as loud as they could over the music that was coming through. We saw so many great singers.”
In Jackson, at Mississippi State University, they found Starr, a preacher’s daughter with a big spiky earring. She'd been shunned from her church after getting pregnant. “She just looked so badass. I remember thinking: it would be awesome if this one could sing really great,” Ronson says. “She just opened her mouth and she had it instantly. I’m so drawn to singers with rasp and something broken in their voice, where you really hear the rawness.”
I hope she gets signed.
