act right by Sasha Keable

*read for free on my Substack

SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC

To be a successful musician in the US, outside of pop and country music, you have to lean into the contemporary Black aesthetic. This involves adopting a slight blaccent, adorning your image in jewelry (grills in particular), and using Black vernacular in your music. It doesn’t have to be wholesale, no, you can sprinkle it in when convenient. It’s a tried and true recipe, and, in my coverage of R&B music, continues to pop up more and more frequently. That’s how a white woman from England can and has become the up-and-coming face of the genre that is borne from and largely dominated by Black people.

Don’t get me wrong, Sasha Keable can absolutely sing. But the moment I heard this deep cajun-esque voice full of what some people describe as soul, I was conflicted. She’s not even the first person I’ve had this issue with this year. New R&B darling Sailorr also cosplays as a Black woman despite being an Asian woman from Florida — it’d be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. I actively avoided reviewing that album for that very reason. But with her latest EP, and a move to LA, Keable has officially used that blackish image well enough to score features from some of the game’s biggest names.