Joy Oladokun Is Reaching Out to the Pop Mainstream With New Album — Even Though, ‘as a Black Queer Human, I’m a Pretty Divisive Figure on Paper’
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic This past awards season, Joy Oladokun was nominated for the Grammys’ first Song for Social Change award, for a song off her previous album called “I See America.” If all you ever heard — or heard about — was that tune (opening lines: “I saw God out on the block today / He was darker than the preachers say”), or know that Oladokun once called herself “the trap Tracy Chapman” (half-jokingly), you could easily leap to the assumption that she’s more of a protest singer than a pop artist.
But can she be at least a little bit of both? She takes it as a compliment that anyone would use that second P-term in describing her third album, “Proof of Life.” Oladokun has been out on the road opening for John Mayer, and the new record is so radio-friendly — and just so friendly, generally — that it wouldn’t feel like a stretch to see her doing tour dates with someone like a Taylor Swift. “I don’t know that I have ambitions to rock stadiums and be on, like, the Joy version of the Eras Tour,” she says. “But it’s so cool that the feedback to this record is that it’s mainstream; someone even called it a pop record — and I was like, that’s cool.
I think my desire for things to be accessible to everybody is what makes it mainstream. As an artist, I think the the aspirations are mostly about: How many different types of people can we get to the table?
Who else relates? We’re in such a fraught, weird, divided time. And it’s interesting because I am, as a Black queer human, a pretty divisive figure on paper.
