“A pacifist in pumps / Not afraid to throw a punch / Or eat your hurt feelings for lunch,” says Candice Anitra on the female powered anthem “Too Much Woman.”
Just in case you're wondering, no, this Philly native and Brooklyn based singer/songwriter makes no apologies for her politics, lyrics or feminist ideologies on her debut LP Bark then Bite featuring the seductively galvanizing first single “Objectify.”
Album credits include Joel Hamilton (Mos Def, Elvis Costello), Dub Trio (Macy Gray, Matisyahu), Marika Hughes (Whitney Houston, Carla Kihlstedt), Scotty Hard (Prince, Louie Vega) and Soulive.
Anitra's home as a young girl was infused with Motown, the Philly Sound, and Staxx Records, as well as institutionalized oppression. She comes from a lineage of singers, whose powerful voices were limited to church and domestic lives. At age 12, Candice asked her dad to teach her to sing; he told her she “wasn’t ready.”
Excited to attend Philadelphia’s Creative and Performing Arts School for high school – and join some of the school’s legendary performers like Boyz II Men, Bilal Oliver and Black Thought, – Anitra's parents instead sent her to Philadelphia High School for Girls.
However she would soon become a regular at Black Lily shows featuring The Roots, Jill Scott and India.Arie, still holding a passion for the arts. Candice attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2000.
The move to New York City afforded her the opportunity to push the edges of artistic expression alongside gifted peers - as a featured vocalist in Kamal Sinclair’s The Beat featuring Mustafa Shakir, as the lead singer of Brooklyn-based True Story featuring Nemiss, as a songwriter for the play ‘Selling Splitsville’, and as a singer and performer in numerous other performance art happenings.
In 2008, Anitra released her EP Easier, produced by Force Theory, music that propelled her demand by music venues throughout New York City and producers worldwide.
Anitra credits artists like Bill Withers, Ella Fitzgerald, childhood friend-saxophonist extraordinaire Jaleel Shaw, and her father William C. Manson for inspiring her singing style.
Withers introduced her to the power of songwriting, while Fitzgerald gave her the courage to expand her vocal range – “Ella makes singing sound effortless, and I want to access that space,” said Anitra.
Amidst her progressive feminist angle is a sound that is simultaneously new and vintage – producer Joel Hamilton references the music as “Tina Turner meets The Beatles” or “Fiona Apple meets India.Arie.”
Lately the songstress has been bearing witness to alchemy at work. "Bark then Bite," her forthcoming album, is the product of progressive chemistry coming together: 15 days at Studio G in Brooklyn with magical producer/engineer/artist Joel Hamilton, during the same month he was wrapping Billboard’s #1 Top Heatseeker’s album Blakroc and a host of other acts.
Anitra proves herself a force to be reckoned with with her latest work. A force who could make a definitive mark on a new decade of music, art and politics. The songstress pushes the envelope with an infusion of funked up rock n’ roll complete with sexually-seductive politically-progressive lyrical content.
The album’s title reflects its ferocity. It is soul music in the genre’s deepest and broadest sense, the music stretches beyond standard definitions but captures Anitra's vision as an artist.
Anitra defines herself as a singer-songwriter-alchemist. Her words turn life’s grist into gold. The first single “Objectify” flips the script on typical notions of objectification and celebrates the sensual and liberating opportunities to be “objectified” according to one’s own self-definition.
With the opening track “White Lines” Bark then Bite begins with hard hitting percussion. The song is a challenge to single-minded, short-sighted, patronizing ideologies – a literal response to Ann Coulter but figuratively suggesting the possibilities for personal transformation.
The uptempo “Let’s Continue” could easily be a hit single without sacrificing depth, profoundly advancing a romance while cautioning against the relationship’s preceding shortcomings. Marika Hughes tantalizes with her cello on the track’s extended outro.
Songs like “Take Me,” “Cross the Water,” “Bad Taste” and “Dark Things” possess melodies that recall Sade’s sultriness but lyrics that are more sensually provocative and emotionally ambiguous (a la’ Meshell N’Degeocello).
“We Are Love” manifests itself as a catchy homage to the power of the human spirit, written out of dismay of California’s passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008. The song is an offered anthem for the gay rights and marriage equality movements, a rebuke of intolerance but ultimately a celebration of love’s transcendent possibilities.
Ask some and they may tell you that Anitra is doing more than sending social messages within her music...she is transforming her family legacy from that of dreams deferred to that of dreams realized.
Check out Objectify below
Check out her MYSPACE page here
Become a Tweetheart of Candice Anitra's on Twitter!
Just in case you're wondering, no, this Philly native and Brooklyn based singer/songwriter makes no apologies for her politics, lyrics or feminist ideologies on her debut LP Bark then Bite featuring the seductively galvanizing first single “Objectify.”
Album credits include Joel Hamilton (Mos Def, Elvis Costello), Dub Trio (Macy Gray, Matisyahu), Marika Hughes (Whitney Houston, Carla Kihlstedt), Scotty Hard (Prince, Louie Vega) and Soulive.
Anitra's home as a young girl was infused with Motown, the Philly Sound, and Staxx Records, as well as institutionalized oppression. She comes from a lineage of singers, whose powerful voices were limited to church and domestic lives. At age 12, Candice asked her dad to teach her to sing; he told her she “wasn’t ready.”
Excited to attend Philadelphia’s Creative and Performing Arts School for high school – and join some of the school’s legendary performers like Boyz II Men, Bilal Oliver and Black Thought, – Anitra's parents instead sent her to Philadelphia High School for Girls.
However she would soon become a regular at Black Lily shows featuring The Roots, Jill Scott and India.Arie, still holding a passion for the arts. Candice attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2000.
The move to New York City afforded her the opportunity to push the edges of artistic expression alongside gifted peers - as a featured vocalist in Kamal Sinclair’s The Beat featuring Mustafa Shakir, as the lead singer of Brooklyn-based True Story featuring Nemiss, as a songwriter for the play ‘Selling Splitsville’, and as a singer and performer in numerous other performance art happenings.
In 2008, Anitra released her EP Easier, produced by Force Theory, music that propelled her demand by music venues throughout New York City and producers worldwide.
Anitra credits artists like Bill Withers, Ella Fitzgerald, childhood friend-saxophonist extraordinaire Jaleel Shaw, and her father William C. Manson for inspiring her singing style.
Withers introduced her to the power of songwriting, while Fitzgerald gave her the courage to expand her vocal range – “Ella makes singing sound effortless, and I want to access that space,” said Anitra.
Amidst her progressive feminist angle is a sound that is simultaneously new and vintage – producer Joel Hamilton references the music as “Tina Turner meets The Beatles” or “Fiona Apple meets India.Arie.”
Lately the songstress has been bearing witness to alchemy at work. "Bark then Bite," her forthcoming album, is the product of progressive chemistry coming together: 15 days at Studio G in Brooklyn with magical producer/engineer/artist Joel Hamilton, during the same month he was wrapping Billboard’s #1 Top Heatseeker’s album Blakroc and a host of other acts.
Anitra proves herself a force to be reckoned with with her latest work. A force who could make a definitive mark on a new decade of music, art and politics. The songstress pushes the envelope with an infusion of funked up rock n’ roll complete with sexually-seductive politically-progressive lyrical content.
The album’s title reflects its ferocity. It is soul music in the genre’s deepest and broadest sense, the music stretches beyond standard definitions but captures Anitra's vision as an artist.
Anitra defines herself as a singer-songwriter-alchemist. Her words turn life’s grist into gold. The first single “Objectify” flips the script on typical notions of objectification and celebrates the sensual and liberating opportunities to be “objectified” according to one’s own self-definition.
With the opening track “White Lines” Bark then Bite begins with hard hitting percussion. The song is a challenge to single-minded, short-sighted, patronizing ideologies – a literal response to Ann Coulter but figuratively suggesting the possibilities for personal transformation.
The uptempo “Let’s Continue” could easily be a hit single without sacrificing depth, profoundly advancing a romance while cautioning against the relationship’s preceding shortcomings. Marika Hughes tantalizes with her cello on the track’s extended outro.
Songs like “Take Me,” “Cross the Water,” “Bad Taste” and “Dark Things” possess melodies that recall Sade’s sultriness but lyrics that are more sensually provocative and emotionally ambiguous (a la’ Meshell N’Degeocello).
“We Are Love” manifests itself as a catchy homage to the power of the human spirit, written out of dismay of California’s passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008. The song is an offered anthem for the gay rights and marriage equality movements, a rebuke of intolerance but ultimately a celebration of love’s transcendent possibilities.
Ask some and they may tell you that Anitra is doing more than sending social messages within her music...she is transforming her family legacy from that of dreams deferred to that of dreams realized.
Check out Objectify below
Check out her MYSPACE page here
Become a Tweetheart of Candice Anitra's on Twitter!
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