Danielia Cotton emerges as the tremendous Rare Child for a stale scene

By Britt Julious
Published: May 30th, 2008 | 10:05am

Critics and artists alike unequivocally over-judge the sophomore album. On the one hand, critics — despite whatever inclinations they might desire to see an artist fail — will anticipate the sort of growth that differentiates the Arcade Fires of the world from the over-hyped the Strokes. On the other hand, musicians worth any grain of salt will set out to prove something — their talent, their drive, or their ambition — to establish themselves in an increasingly fickle music industry. Enter Danielia Cotton and her sophomore release, Rare Child.

Cotton, a true rocknroll troubadour, emerged with a familiar, yet complicated, sound and style in a largely homogenous and whitewashed independent music scene. Born and bred in rural New Jersey, Cotton’s blues rock (think Bonnie Raitt for the new millennium) is a far cry from the standard fare of many R&B females in the music industry.

On her second album, she aims for that familiar blues-rock sound, albeit with the sort of added strength, intuition, and growth that would ultimately break any artist out of the cheers and jeers of a second act. “The first album was more of an artistic statement. This one’s more of a music statement,” the singer says. “I think we were going back to the real music.”

Indeed, much like the classic styling one finds in her work, the same traditional blues-rock ethic was applied to the production of the album. Like other blues-based rock contemporaries — the White Stripes inevitably come to mind — Cotton and her band chose to record the bulk of the album on two-inch tape, with band members collectively adding their parts in the studio.

But instrumentation and production values aside, if Cotton’s first album was an artistic statement, one meant to welcome a sound that wouldn’t commonly be associated with her face, then her sophomore effort — dedicated to a musical statement — extends this complicated metaphor even further.

Cotton makes no secret of her interesting childhood. Although she laughs off the quizzical stares one might give when recalling her musical background, one filled with solos in her church’s gospel choir and long nights with her favorite AC/DC records, the amalgamation of rock and soul is certainly an interesting manner in which one tries to “make it” in the music business of 2008.

“With the black scene, people always associate you with R&B. There's a little bit of a stereotype that way. I think it's really easy [to stereotype],” she says. “Once they listen, they find out that it really is me. It's that I grew up with rocknroll.”

As Cotton is careful to point out, the platform of rocknroll music is so eclectic nowadays that the archaic, stereotypical lines as to what stands for an R&B record are slowly getting blurred. “I continue to reiterate always that rock is a very eclectic genre and rocknroll can be rocking in anything, whether it's country, blues, jazz, whatever,” she says. “I think this album was [made with] a lot of influences I've had in my life.”

Her love of rocknroll isn’t all for naught. One spin through Rare Child is indicative of that and comparisons to Janis Joplin and Tina Turner abound. Cotton’s aggressive, empowered vocals are proverbial without being cloying and recognizable but simultaneously distinct. It’s the sort of assessment one can appreciate when trying to break out of any musical stereotype and one that Cotton refuses to take lightly. “For female vocalists, there haven't been a lot of females coming out with that kind of power, you know, just throwing it to the wall,” Cotton says.

If one wants to “throw it to the wall” to eradicate the box that one uses to classify musicians, Cotton certainly seems willing and capable of taking on the challenge.

Danielia Cotton MySpace