14 DAY TRIAL // Ke$ha might be a name that does not ring a bell with many yet but, no doubt, the first single off her “Animal” album is already ringing in many ears as it continues to get more and more airplay and climb charts. Speaking with Out magazine, the singer opens up about her influences, her music and, last but not least, whether she prefers women over men for a longtime commitment.
She’s young, ambitious and, above all, well endowed with all the qualities necessary for success, many critics seem to believe. Her contributions so far include an appearance in Katy Perry’s video for “I Kissed a Girl,” of which she says she never even dreamed it would be so big and a collaboration with rapper Flo Rida, which actually pushed her up front. She is the next Lady Gaga, having already taken down one of her records with “TiK ToK,” her first single, Out magazine says.
“My mom wrote country music, so I listened to a lot of country, and my brother listened to punk, so he gave me Fugazi records. To rebel, I started listening to dance!” Ke$ha reveals in the interview for the upcoming issue of the mag. She manifests the same indecisiveness as regards her personal life as well, of which she says only that she “like[s] people” when asked about her orientation.
She would be the first to tiptoe around the answer without actually once making her stance clear, either. Before her, Adam Lambert of season 8 of American Idol also did the same, saying that he hated labeling and being tagged as just one thing or another. Also like Lambert, Ke$ha too is poised for amazing chart success, having only shown the world a side of her contagious rebelliousness, which marks the first stage in a new era of pop meets rap, as the New York Times put it only days ago.
“A burgeoning pop star who is primarily a singer, Ke$ha is nevertheless a pioneer. ‘TiK ToK’ and the handful of other rap-influenced songs on her debut album, ‘Animal’ (Kemosabe / RCA), to be released Jan. 5, are the product of a world in which hip-hop is such lingua franca, so embedded in the pop slipstream that it’s possible to make songs that are primarily rapped but are not widely considered to be rap songs. It’s all part of the continuing deracination of the act of rapping, which used to be inscribed as a specifically black act, but which has been appropriated so frequently and with such ease that it’s been, in some cases, re-racinated. The very existence of the casually rapping white girl reflects decreasingly stringent ideas about race and gender,” the NY Times wrote.