Primer: Kreayshawn

KREAYSHAWN

Born:

In San Francisco in 1989 as Natassia Gail Zolot.

 

Sounds like: An undergrad exercise in hip-hop compiled by a fitfully charming lass of compelling backstory and rather more friends than ideas.

For fans of: Keening swag; viral kitsch; rap music for reasons beyond beats, rhymes or flow.

Latest release: Somethin' 'Bout Kreay pushes her wispy larynx and artlessly arrhythmic delivery through the genres of the moment for an effect less eclectic or dilettantish than desperate. 

Why you care: Live by the meme, die by the meme. But chortling over Kreayshawn's plummet from princess of the Interwebs—following 2011's infectious paean to individualist fashion, "Gucci Gucci," which spawned more than 30 million YouTube hits—to cautionary tale after her major-label debut moved fewer than 5,000 units in its first week ignores the larger point. Columbia Records never should have offered a reported seven-figure advance to an artist whose primary talent is music-video direction. Kreayshawn isn't Ke$ha, a pop-culture puppeteer with a fully realized public persona and power-pointed career progression. She's just a kid, really, one given a camcorder at an early age midst bohemian upbringing, and her flourish of indie-girl élan happened to coincide with the insta-mythmaking mechanisms of social media. The album will serve as an especially ill-conceived memento of one crazy summer of her 22nd year, but for all the worries of our embarrassments lingering forever in virtual ubiquity, the truth seems to be that almost every miscue shall soon be washed away within the coming flood of self-expression.

SEE IT: Kreayshawn plays Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., with Rye Rye, Honey Cocaine and Chippy Nonstop on Thursday, Dec. 13. 8 pm. $20. All ages.

WWeek 2015

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.