Candice likens her musical existence to feeling like a stranger on earth. “Humans like for you to say what your identifying labels are,” she points out. “Once you do that, you have to stay in that category. If you do anything else, it confuses them.” Embodying the subtle rapture of Joan Armatrading, the robust confidence of Meshell Ndegeocello, and the thespian gender inquisition of Cheryl Dunye, the left-of-soul singer-songwriter has learned that it’s much easier to buck convention than to live a futile existence of the square peg in a round hole. “The thing I’m embracing and having the most fun with is that it’s ok to be the me that I’ve always been all along.” Hailing from a planet called Philadelphia, the Brooklyn-based songstress was reared in a musical family rooted in the glorious sounds of the local church choir. “Music was a big part of our household,” she says. “My father’s love of music and his writing music was something that was very special and important early on.” However, many years passed before the impetus to find her voice struck. “I always considered myself as an artist. By the time I was interested in singing, I asked my father to teach me. And he told me I wasn’t ready yet. For many years, I battled that comment.” Featuring live actors backed by illustrated technicolor settings, Candice faces derogatory and inhibiting comments, to which she responds by drawing boxes around the perpetrators, effectively caging them in, as she chastises their disrespect. The surreal illustrated backgrounds contrast with the serious subject matter and position Candice as a confident woman who will not let others confine nor define her, true to her vision as a person and artist. Candice is currently working on her Big Treee album. Soon after the earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010, a photograph of a mountain of dead bodies gripped Candice Anitra. The shared humanity screamed out, and raw emotion compelled Anitra to compose a song as a reminder that we are all connected and vulnerable, living on one shared earth, and responsible for supporting one another.
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