My Beiber Was Robbed!

I am making my way through clips from Sunday night's Grammy Awards. The Husband "accidentally" erased the award show from the DVR, so I am exploring the event on this Internet thing. I had already awoken on Monday with the news that my Justin Beiber had lost the Best New Artist to some chick I had barely even heard of. WTF! After I had cried into my Hello Kitty pillow, I wrote in my journal, did my Aerie facial (no animal bi-products), slipped into my skinny jeans from H&M, grabbed my Iphone & my Ipod, sat down at my computer & dashed off a Tweet about how much I hate that stupid nobody bitch-Esperanza Spalding for stealing my Beiber's much deserved Grammy.

Well, it turns out that Esperanza Spalding grew up in the King neighborhood, close to Post Apocalyptic Bohemia. When Spalding was younger it was a pretty rough part of town, now it is rather gentrified. Only in Portland can a neighborhood that is 37% minority be considered the African-American part of town. Portland is so white that the black section of town is named-Albina.

Spalding taught herself how to play the violin at the age of 5 & at the age of 15 she was the concertmaster of Oregon’s Chamber Music Society. That is major at 15 & self taught. She attended Portland State University at 16 & unbelievably, became a teacher at the Berklee College of Music at 20 years of age. Spalding is the very first jazz artist to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.



She has already released 3 albums, & performed at the White House & the BET Awards. You have to listen to her work to understand just how talented & amazing she is. I’m surprised that it’s taken her this long to be recognized. There is no doubt the swirl of craziness is a good thing, because now people will actually want to know who she is & will listen to her music.