Kali Uchis (2019)

One Liner:  Mediocre R&B sounds with some Amy Winehouse tendencies

Wikipedia Genre:  R&B, neo soul, pop, Urbano music
Home: Virginia

Poster Position: 5

Both Weekends.

Thoughts: She also came to town in 2015 for ACL, but I avoided that show.  When working on my predictions for this year, I tried her out then because she had been a critical darling last year and played Lolla.  At the time I just simply said I tried one of her songs and it sucked so she therefore wasn't coming to ACL.  Not only wrong, but the fifth freaking line.

Saw something on YouTube calling her the "West Coast Amy Winehouse," and I suppose that fits better than anything I could come up with.  BUT, she's not nearly as good as real deal Amy Winehouse.  Come on.  Back in 2015 when I looked at her, she only had three songs available on Spotify, but since then she has released 2015's Por Vida and 2018's Isolation, as well as a handful of other singles.  

I get it that there is some throwback going on here, but its a pretty watered-down musical thing compared to the bad-assery of Back to Black.  Check out "Killer" for one of the best comparisons I think I can find here to Winehouse.  The tunes kind of sound like that Thundercat dude - sort of funky, but in a looser, smeary sort of way, like old school funk was given acid.  But then "In My Dreams" sounds like The Gorillaz made the track and even sing along for a part.

Her top track is from the new album, and features both Tyler, the Creator, and Bootsy Collins, which is kinda funky.  "After the Storm" with 68.5 million streams.

I like the Bootsy parts.  I do not like her vamping look - just trying to hard to look exactly like something (which I know, is kind of the deal with videos, but it just seems so manufactured and too much), like her lips are actually half that size but she just keeps shoving them into the position she memorized in the mirror earlier. I don't mean to hate on looks - I try to just stick with the music here, but she is bugging me.  The song is fine, although her part is probably the weakest portion.

Real name is Karly-Marina Loaiza, and she is Columbian-American.  She was born in Virginia, but moved back and forth between Columbia and the States as she was growing up.  They came to America fleeing the mid-90's conflict in Columbia.  She says that her moniker was given to her by her father, but no explanation I can find.  She also lived on the streets for a while, after her father tired of her being disrespectful.  She ended up parking a Subaru in the parking lot of a 24-hour market and sleeping with all of her belongings in the back, while still in high school.  According to this article, she wrote "Killer" in the back of that Subaru, playing it on her keyboard and coming up with the lyrics in the evenings.  Pretty wild.  She later made up with her pops and is cool with him, but I bet that left a mark.

She was 18 when she released her first mixtape, and Snoop Dogg found it and announced his love online, which definitely helped.

Hey!  I was right - "In My Dreams" does feature Gorillaz!  She also has one ("Tomorrow") produced by Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, one with Thundercat (damn, I'm good!) called "Body Language," and then a few other interesting add-ons like BadBadNotGood and Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio.

The top track from her old album is called "Loner," with 23.5 million streams.

Man, if her mannerisms bothered me before, this maxes that out to 11.  Its like a Kardashian on TikTok fighting to score a new NBA guy.  I do not enjoy the video or the song.  Too much.

That article I linked to above also has a very in-depth discussion of an online kerfuffle with Uchis where she was accused of accentuating her brownness for benefit while still being a white Latina.  it is honestly a slightly confusing portion of the article, but I think that confusion is held on the parts of a lot of people in that conversation, because know one truly knows what is right or wrong when it comes to fine gradients of race.  I'm NOT trying to get into the discussion, but I found it interesting to read the back-and-forth that goes on with race identities within a single race.

She has a brand new single released June 2019, which is notable to me mainly because it features Mac Miller, who died last year.  "Time," with 7.8 million streams.

Also has Anderson Paak's band the Free Nationals on there, and you can hear that funky, cool influence in the tune.  Again, I like the tune itself, but her parts are not the best parts on there, she's just the hook singer.

This one isn't for me.