Baby Queen, a rockstar on a crusade against influencers

“ The only problem in London is nature ” recognizes Bella Latham in her pretty voice hoarse, “ no way to have a green space when leaving home “. “ There are quite a few parks ” she blurted out conciliatory “ but nothing to reconnect you with your environment” . When you spend all of your youth in a city like Durban (South Africa), wedged between the ocean and the wilderness, the comparison is necessarily disadvantageous. As a child, Bella goes hiking every weekend with her father, who gives her funk and soul on long journeys.

The girl obviously wants become “Ranger”, we understand her, she literally lives between giraffes and elephants, but the teenager discovers the guitar, the piano, records a few songs, and realizes that Durban is also a small conservative and cramped town. “ I had space to dream, not to play” she continues. “The musical environment was very male in the corner, I didn’t fit into the pattern, so I just couldn’t be myself “.

London, the second choice

At 18, Madame packed her bags for Hollywood, which opened wide the doors to a career as a popstar…. Or not. The green card passes her under her nose, and Bella ends up in London, graciously renamed “ second city on the planet where we may consider a musical career “. “ I thought that everything would start easily, I was wrong . For four years, I lived a journey as chaotic as it is exciting “.

Ecstatic at the plethora of nightlife activities offered by Albion, Bella leaves the lodging offered by her aunt, lives in the small week, and falls in love with a fashion influencer on Instagram. “ Once again, and unwittingly, I found myself in an environment to which I absolutely did not belong. London is a rough place, where you could die on a corner of the sidewalk without people don’t care. I used to hang out with people who made me feel like the whole town was filled with haughty, self-centered jerks. No matter where I was, I was transparent, insignificant, because I wasn’t “popular” on social media. I spent entire evenings with self-styled “influencers” who spent their time on their phones editing photos that were supposed to represent their dream lives. ‘collapsed, everything I thought was cool over the phone was fake and miserable “.

Thank you for breaking up

Luckily, she ends up being dumped, comes back to music, and sees it as an ideal tool to denounce this which she considers “ a real danger for all teens who let themselves be influenced online by the lies and untruths circulating there “. “ The further I got away from this toxic environment, the more I realized how far it took me from my dreams ” insists Bella Latham. “ I worked non-stop. I composed, composed and still composed to find a voice, a style, a universe “. Bella then takes the name of Baby Queen, which evokes both the past and the future, immaturity and projects in the making.

Under a diaper candy pink, his texts are totally in line with his experience and brutally and honestly evoke this passage to adulthood, with a good dose of citric and second degree acid. “ All I wanted was to be totally honest. Show the intensity of what you can feel at an age where everything is changing “. The Yearbook (Universal, released September 3) is a testimony, rather inflated on the form, since it takes the opposite of the current pop trend to minimalism, to wrap it all in a deluge of beats and instruments reminiscent of the early 2010s.

“I’m obviously a pop artist,” insists Bella. “But I want to have the rights and the attitude of rockstars. It’s so much more interesting and open than you would expect from well-formatted popstars.” Ranger’s career, is it over? “ Not at all ” concludes Baby Queen “ About a month ago, I cracked, I wanted to give up everything . The only place I felt a call to was the wild South African plains. I might not be a game ranger, but one day I will buy a farm in a nature reserve “.