My American Dream Sounds Like Nina Simone : The Record : NPR
I discovered Nina Simone through the back door. I would like to claim that I grew up on her classic songs, like “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “Four Women” and “Mississippi Goddam.” But I didn’t. Like so many of my generation, I found her through hip-hop loops and samples.
Beginning in 1996 with Fugees member Lauryn Hill’s famous reference on “Ready or Not,” I followed Simone’s voice as hip-hop artists invoked her. And she was everywhere, from Mos Def’s indicting “Rock N Roll” to Kanye West’s insistent sampling of her voice and piano riffs on all but two of his albums, to the cover of “I Wish I Knew How It Feels to Be Free” by John Legend and The Roots on their 2011 Wake Up! album and of course Jennifer Hudson belting “Feeling Good” in Weight Watchers ads.
Artists as wide ranging as Alicia Keys, Antony and The Johnsons, Lil Wayne, Adele and Michael Buble find inspiration in her voice, a dusky contralto in which we can all locate some parts of ourselves. As open as it is daring, as full with possibilities as the American dream itself, it was produced not from the gut, as musicologist Gutherie Ramsey writes, but from the head.