Dear Universal: Nobody Puts Robyn In The Remix Corner

noah | January 29, 2008 5:30 am
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So the Swedish kook-pop princess/Idolator patron saint Robyn is finally going to have a proper release of her album in the States, only three years after she initially self-released it after breaking free from Jive’s early-millennium teenpop clutches. This is very exciting news, not the least because she’s actually going to be playing shows within the country’s decadent coastal enclaves over the next couple of weeks. But yesterday, i observed a somewhat troubling development regarding how Robyn the artist and Robyn the album might be marketed on this side of the world, and it involved her playing second freaking fiddle to Snoop Freakin’ Dogg:

Ugh. Ugh. It’s not the song, which I thought was fine on first listen, but the fact that a remix–released just as the Rakamonie EP is hitting stores–in which Robyn is effectively reduced to “cute background singer” seems to be the first foot being put forward here. And for an artist with such a singularly awesome persona and vision, this is not good–I mean, people, c’mon, this is Robyn, not Ashanti. Her songs have stood on their own in other countries; can’t that happen here? Or is Universal so scared that Robyn’s outre persona and twisty interpretations of the “pop music” concept might turn off American audiences that they feel she has to be paired up–and effectively neutered–by an established male star?

Snoop + Robyn [Discobelle]

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