Nelly Furtado Rediscovers Her Hip-Hop Roots
By all means, it doesn’t make sense. Nelly Furtado, the Canadian singer-songwriter once known for crooning the girly ballad I’m Like a Bird, is now rapping with hip-hop giant Timbaland on her hit single Promiscuous. Granted, she’s still got the raspy vocals that made her famous, but the scratching bass and flirty lyrics that dominate Promiscuous are new additions to her repertoire.
And listeners are loving it: Promiscuous has been Furtado’s most successful track yet, reaching number one in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Loose, the accompanying album, topped the Billboard Top 200 album chart in its first week of release, becoming Furtado’s first-ever number one record.
Furtado attributes the rawer, bolder sound of her new album to the time she has spent raising her two-year-old daughter, Nevis. “After having food thrown at me by a toddler in a crowded restaurant, I’m made of steel,” she explained in a recent Rolling Stone interview. With her newfound strength and a star-studded production team that included Timbaland and Pharrell Williams, Furtado infused Loose with an experimental hip-hop/R+B sound that was missing from her first two folksier releases.
Furtado’s departure from her signature introspective style has led some of her fans to write her off as a genre-swapping sellout a la Jewel or Gwen Stefani. But unlike her made-over contemporaries, Furtado has not completely reinvented herself to become who she is today: she has loved hip-hop since she was a child. “I’d watch Pump It Up! with Dee Barnes religiously, listen to Seattle’s hip-hop/R+B stations, dress up like TLC for Halloween,” she reminisces. “I was obsessed!”
And hip-hop was just the beginning: before long, the inquisitive Furtado began drawing influence from a wide spectrum of musical genres. She listened to world music from Portugal, Brazil, and Pakistan, in addition to standard British and American pop. As a musician herself, she used to perform in a trip-hop duo called Nelstar, and she has collaborated with artists ranging from Coldplay’s Chris Martin to rapper Missy Elliot. “I think I am a musically promiscuous girl,” says Furtado. “I am not faithful to one style of music.”
There are few cases when a lack of faith leads to success, but Nelly Furtado’s is certainly one of them. Promiscuous continues to dominate charts worldwide, and with a much-anticipated tour of the Americas and Europe ahead, there’s no sign of Nelly Furtado’s popularity diminishing.
Artist Info
Most Popular Songs: I’m Like a Bird, Turn Off the Light, Promiscuous featuring Timbaland
Has Collaborated With: Moby, Missy Elliot, Jurassic 5, Juanes, The Roots
Current Influences: Bloc Party, System of a Down, Death From Above 1979, Coldplay
Cool Quotes
“I spent a lot of time in my youth writing rhymes and being a part of the hip-hop scene. And with hip-hop, it’s so much about just you and a microphone and just being able to totally say what you want to say with just a mic and a voice. I feel like the nucleus of a great pop record is always a lyric and melody.”
“I always know there’s a new genre left to discover,” she explains. “For me, it’s like a metaphor for life. I feel like if you can get down with any style of music, you can get down with any style of person. So it’s fun for me - I get to expose my fans to different vibes and they, in turn, open their minds too. I’m always undergoing mind-opening.”
More…
- Promiscuous (Video)
- Nelly Furtado on Wikipedia
- Nelly Furtado on MySpace
- Nelly Furtado on iTunes
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