The only thing anyone knew for sure was that she wrote and produced the music, and that it was being passed around with the hush-hush secrecy of a sensitive dossier.
She did a mini-tour of morning shows in 2007 and 2008—“Today,” “Maury,” “Good Morning America,” and “The View.” At twelve, she started working with Alicia Keys’s management company, and she signed to RCA Records as a teen.
Though it would be disingenuous to suggest that H.E.R.’s music doesn’t resonate with listeners, it does feel optimized for industry gatekeepers—a class still figuring out what to do with so-called “urban” music.
The mixtape, in its earliest iterations, in a music ecosystem that wasn’t redefined by streaming, was self-produced, independently released, given away for free, and often full of samples and beats that couldn’t be sourced legally.
Although this feels like another act of narrative control from an artist who has been meticulously managing her profile, there is some credence to the idea that H.E.R.
Many of the songs linger in a familiar headspace—that of being taken for granted Jerkins is a producer.
wades through a thicket of bass on “Bloody Waters” with a wispy falsetto, and then dives deeper into activist soul on “I Can’t Breathe.” She pushes into neo soul with “Hold On” and then retreats into strobing, probing balladry on “For Anyone.” Each of these songs displays a rich timbre that sets her alongside divas of the recent past.
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