Amanda Blank is the kind of girl who loves to yell at her audience and hates to wear pants — or at least that’s the impression she left on her last tour. Traveling across the country with hip-hop/new wave phenomenon Santigold, the Philadelphia spitfire unleashed her own brand of cheeky, aggressive white-girl rap on unsuspecting audiences.
Now touring with adorable indie duo Matt and Kim, Blank is promoting her newly-released album, “I Love You.” The record marks Blanks’ foray into solo stardom, as her previous releases have been with performance art/rock/pop band Sweatheart. Her leadoff single, “Might Like You Better,” is a sexually-charged, three-minute teaser of the album; a buzzing, synthesized background accompanies Blank’s scratchy vocals, which repeatedly suggest “I might like you better if we slept together,” borrowing from Romeo Void’s ‘80s hit of the same name.
“Make It Take It” is a fast-paced, smirking party anthem made for jumping, screaming audiences. “Something Bigger, Something Better” is a slower, seductive track where Blank reduces her raspy voice almost to a whisper. These, and all of her tracks on MySpace, are marked as explicit, a touch that probably made the mischievous rapper grin.
And although she’s just having fun, there are a ton of challenges that this artist needs to face in the male-dominated industry of not just music, but hip-hop specifically. It’s not just about being a white rapper or a female rapper, it’s about being a white, female rapper who’s not afraid of her sexuality and wants everyone to know it. Sometimes perceived as trashy, crude or promiscuous, Blank’s work gets a lot of heat for the same things that her male counterparts are celebrated for.
Blank knows this and isn’t afraid to confront it. “A lot of people who buy rap music are boys, and do boys really want to hear girls rapping?” she questioned in an interview with Urb Magazine. “I don’t think they do, really. There are boys who appreciate a girl that can rap well, but I don’t know if it will get to the point where there’s a ton of guys waiting for my record to drop.”
And she’s got no problem telling critics what’s what. When Pitchfork gave her a 2 out of 10, she was quick to retort. She told thevine.com, “First of all, I don’t think they know anything about rap music or black music. They clearly have an issue with their own white guilt about me making music... I think [Pitchfork] are daring me to read it.”
Despite the setbacks, Blank’s got a ton of street cred when it comes to collaboration. Before going solo, not only was she a member of Sweatheart, she often collaborated with Philadelphia’s own Spank Rock, an electro-rap group whose members are now acting as her producers. And along with working with the likes of Ghostface Killah, M.I.A. and Santigold, her work on the official Eli Escobar and Doug Grayson remix of Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” has garnered her big-time attention on the party music circuit.
Her solo album has been on the back burner for a while, and it’s hard to get a record off the ground when you’re involved in so much. “I definitely think it was a while coming, I just work really slow, because I’m always so involved in ten things at once,” she explained to thevine.com. “If I can spend a little time on a lot of different things, I don’t get as bored. Or let one project drive me crazy. Because you become obsessed with it. So doing other stuff is a good way to step back and take a break.”
And when Blank said she’s going solo, she really means solo. Her stage show is relatively bare, usually not more than just her and a microphone, possibly a DJ. “I don’t have any backup dancers. I don’t have flashy bullshit — it’s just me and a microphone,” she told Interview Magazine. “This time I’m alone up there, so I gotta be sellin’ the shit out of these songs no matter what.” Despite internal nervousness, what Blank projects to the audience is nothing but high-energy confidence, darting around the edge of the stage and screaming into the audience the way only a performer secure in her style could.
Blank hits the Black Cat stage with Matt and Kim on Sept. 16.
You can reach this staff writer at kcasino@theeagleonline.com.
