Jay-Z has a new protégé, and her name is Bridget Kelly. If her name isn’t familiar to you now, I’m sure it will be very soon. She was the first artist signed to his Roc Nation label. I vaguely remember her performing “Empire State of Mind” with Jay-Z on SNL a while ago… her rise has been a couple of years in the making.
I caught Bridget last week at S.O.B.’s in SoHo (I was in town for the annual CMJ music conference and the folks at Roc Nation invited me to check her out). BK mentioned that exactly one year ago, she had made her official debut on that very stage. She opened the night with “Empire State of Mind” and then launched into tracks from her EP Every Girl. I admit being surprised by the number of people in the audience who could sing along, after all, I had just “discovered” her music last month. But let me tell you, once she belted out a cover of Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” (one of my favorite songs), she won me over! The woman did her thing! I wasn’t even mad at her for playing “Special Delivery” twice (there was a weird sound emitting from the speakers during the first rendition). She had had a great set up to then and didn’t want to end the show with anything but her best. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world gets to know Bridget as well as her fellow New Yorkers.
Watch the livestream from Bridget’s S.O.B.’s show below and catch her latest single “Special Delivery” on our Silky Soul channel.
– Submitted by Shalonn Hilburn, Music Design