KID SISTER ULTRAVIOLET (DOWNTOWN)
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Kid Sister (MySpace) just released her long-delayed debut, Ultraviolet (on Downtown, a corporate indie distributed by Universal and Atlantic), and throughout the album she engages this idiom but also undermines it—she puts it on and takes it off like a costume. Like Lily Allen’s recent It’s Not Me, It’s You, it’s an album that’s in part about her newfound fame and fabulousness, but Kid Sister hasn’t bought in all the way. On several tracks she peels back a corner of pop’s fantasy act. In the outro to “Let Me Bang 2009,” she hollers, “Famous in a Hyundai!” in an off-the-cuff stream of keeping-it-real-isms, including another about hoarding quarters for laundry. The only clothing label she name-drops is Stacy Adams, a favored brand of black men who do church dapper.
In short, she’s self-aware, and though she’s clearly constructed the fundamentals of her music and her persona to succeed in the pop world, she refutes the unreality of the capital idiom even as she embraces it. She may be a diva, but she’s the people’s diva.
“Life on TV” also outlines her understanding of pop’s capitalist frame: “First rule in showbiz if ya wanna maintain / Big thangs / Big chains / Big pay / Peep game, peep game / OK!” The song is about attaining and maintaining the unreal—keeping up appearances. “Smile to the camera / Don’t tap ya weave / Or it’s back to the factory / ‘Cause this is life on TV.”
