…as long as it’s not hers. Talk about double standards, huh? Speech Debelle is the controversial Mercury Prize winner, a rapper who is known for being as cocky as she is talented. Her real name is Corynne Elliot, and she recently walked away with a check worth ₤20,000. In spite of that – or maybe because of it – she encouraged people to download illegal music, as long as it is the work of other artists, and not hers.
She is quoted as saying that “There is a recession. People are angry and don’t have the money to spend on rubbish. They should download music for free when it is rubbish. A lot of music sounds the same all day on the radio. Now people will hear my album and know you can make music that’s different. The sincerity has shone through.”
Big words for a relatively unknown artist, don’t you think? Anyhow, I am writing about it not to support her statement, obviously, but to rant about how an artist can even think of such a thing! I mean, okay, there are some artists who would not mind people downloading their music for free. After all, true blue artists just want to get their work out there, never mind not getting rich. But to actually encourage people to rip off fellow artists?
Yeah, it is true that there is rubbish – even a lot of it – being aired on the radio and being sold in music stores, but that does not mean that you should tell people to do something illegal! Oh well, this one is sure to bite her in her behind.