Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
Actress Amandla Stenberg hasn’t officially announced she’s launching a music career, but after the song and video she’s gifted us in promotion of her new film Everything, Everything, it would be rude not to. Watching the video for her cover of Let My Baby Stay by unremarkable Canadian Mac DeMarco, I was instantly convinced that the pop world needs this girl. She’s bursting with charisma, coolness and likeability. This isn’t her first foray into music, as she was in a folk duo called Honeywater (a DIY project with a friend) and featured in Beyoncé’s Lemonade videos. However, she’s best known for playing Rue in The Hunger Games, and has since become an online influencer (with 1 million Instagram followers) and Teen Vogue favourite thanks to her activism, especially on the issue of intersectional feminism. She was recently described by Vogue as “neo-feminist, biracial, post-gender” and “the wokest teenager alive.” Outside of acting, the 18-year-old got most attention for her spoken word video, Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows, a school project gone viral. The thought and energy that has gone into Let My Baby Stay says to me that she’s ready to make a serious play for pop stardom – I hope I’m right.
UPDATE: Since I posted this, I’ve found out she’s signed to Interscope. Hooray!!