Grace Jones: Nicki, Miley & More Singers Are on "A Road to Nowhere"
One legend who's not consuming a steady diet of today's mainstream pop artists: Grace Jones. The 67-year-old singer and model recently re-blew everyone's mind at Brooklyn's Afropunk Festival, and now she has an autobiography cheekily titled I'll Never Write My Memoirs on the way. Time Out London's early excerpt (the book publishes September 29 in America; pre-order!) is pretty explosive. Here's the opener:
I come from the underground. I am never comfortable in the middle of the stream, flowing in the same direction as everyone else. I think people assume that’s where I want to be, famous for being famous, because as part of what I do there is a high level of showing off. But my instinct is always to resist the pull of the obvious. It’s not easy.
Trends come along and people say, ‘Follow that trend’. There’s a lot of that around at the moment: ‘Be like Sasha Fierce. Be like Miley Cyrus. Be like Rihanna. Be like Lady Gaga. Be like Rita Ora and Sia. Be like Madonna.’ I cannot be like them—except to the extent that they are already being like me.
I have been so copied by those people who have made fortunes that people assume I am that rich. But I did things for the excitement, the dare, the fact that it was new, not for the money, and too many times I was the first, not the beneficiary.
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