On her debut album, Bombay Calling, Samsaya revisits her heritage and reconciles her many identities while forging a completely new brand of pop. She achieves a kind of carefree authenticity, and it’s not happening solely because of her experiences of feeling otherness. The beat for “Stereotype” recalls the buoyancy of OutKast’s “Hey-Ya”, a song that obliterated boundaries with it’s cross-genre popularity when it was released.Similarly, “Stereotype” points out that music can be a bridge between cultures, and that sometimes all it takes to unite us is a good dance beat.
Vocally, Samsaya has achieved the very sound she envied as a kid, her voice soaring and bubbling, reminiscent of pop stars like Gwen Stefani, Solange, and Robyn, letting it loose over infectious beats. When asked to put the sound into words, Samsaya chooses one that’s highly appropriate: magma. “It’s a Greek word for ‘mixture. ' And it’s actually the center of the world, inside the earth, explosive like lava. So it’s like Magma Pop. It’s a mixture, it’s a lot of emotion and it’s really warm, sometimes scorching hot.”
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