In the 45 minutes Baby Rose and I spend on Zoom, she refers to herself as "weird" 11 times. "I like the word weird," she says. "I probably should think of a different synonym, but to be 'weird' is to not be understood by a majority of people." She's absolutely right—Baby Rose isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Compared to the sultry, soft coos and sex-heavy themes of R&B in recent years, Rose's songs—a buffet of emotions laced with romantic vulnerability—come with a voice you're not supposed to like immediately. Her low-register rasp, seductive and smoky, husky and emotive, makes you feel like you're sitting under the hazy lights of a hole-in-the-wall 1960s nightclub. Cigar smoke permeates the atmosphere, and vocals as affecting and intense as Nina Simone's envelop your ears. The only thing is, it's 2020, so you're probably burning incense or a candle. But the allure is still the same.
If we must settle on one synonym, Rose suggests "rare." Before she understood the uniqueness of her voice's tone and texture, the singer (born Jasmine Rose Wilson) was only aware of how different it sounded compared to her peers, who subjected her to years of bullying. Her catharsis came from tears.
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