Everyone Is Talking About Baby Rose
At the top of 2020, Baby Rose’s US tour was basically sold out. Her 2017 EP, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn had garnered R&B’s newest phenom a strong fan base, along with her invigorating performance on COLORS and her 2019 debut LP, To Myself is set to re-release this Friday (Mar. 27). For Rose Rose, her relationship with music has always been spiritual — which she credits for her success.
“Music is embedded in me naturally. I don’t do it for me; I do it for God because God has got me here,” Rose says. “Music is a divine gift that I’ve been given. If all of my labels are to be removed, I still have this voice, this innate desire to create music, to sing and to tell a story. I can be all of those things and I can be none of those things, but I’ll always have this gift.”
Born Jasmine Rose Wilson, Baby Rose created her stage name to describe how she feels about herself — “an evolving, young woman who is not afraid to be vulnerable and loud in that vulnerability.” At first listen, many assume she’s older. Yet, she’s quick to explain that her look doesn’t define her voice and while she loves “vintage-sounding records,” she also indulges in “ratchet s**t.”
The 25-year-old D.C. native was taught to embrace this duality since childhood. She grew up surrounded by a myriad of genres like jazz, gospel, classic R&B, and hip-hop —thanks to her immediate family.
“All of that together made a soundscape that I really fell in love with. Not necessarily who, but more of what. I really don’t place that much influence on people alone,” she tells Teen Vogue. Nina Simone is the only exception to that sentiment. “[She] really just wrote for her. Her music hit different." Through this, she also discovered her blossoming talent. “I always knew my voice was lower and raspier than other little girls. I’ve always had my voice. There’s never not been a time when I [wasn’t aware of] that. Discovering what I had to say and what I had to do with my voice came when I turned 18.”
Rose began singing with the piano at nine years old — self-taught by ear — and kept up her practice even when she moved from DC to Fayetteville. Throughout her formative years, she still sang and was diligent about practicing. “I didn’t have a social life, all throughout high school, all throughout middle school,” she says. “And I don’t regret any of that. I was in the studio or doing talent shows. I had committed myself to that so early on.”
Adding, “For the better part of my life I had been teased about my voice and the way I carried it. But as I grew older, it became ‘Oh, this is cute. Oh, little Alicia Keys.’ I knew I had this gift and I was going somewhere.”
But when the time came to look into higher education, Rose decided to major in biochemical engineering with a joint scholarship to Spelman and Georgia Tech. “I was really gifted at science and math,” she shares. “And the only way I got to do music was by having good grades.” On move-in day, Rose found out that they’d given her scholarship away — because she had been in LA for The Voice (which she didn’t end of winning) — and ended up at a community college in the city of Atlanta.
For Rose, her journey then became a culmination of “breadcrumbs,” as she lovingly coined them. Two years ago, she was a struggling college student working to alleviate her family’s financial strains when her mother fell ill. A friend invited her to perform at a college showcase and with her mom’s blessing, she “did that sh*t.”
“I was supposed to sing one song, but that lasted for 15 minutes because I felt so free. I felt like damn, even with everything seemingly falling apart around me, this is the thing that makes me feel alive and gives me hope. From that moment, it catalyzed,” Rose says.
Fast-forward to just a week ago before the global pandemic and untimely quarantine, Rose was gearing to wrap up her first headlining tour, which also happened to be her fifth tour since last May. She opened for Ari Lennox and months later, then Snoh Aalegra, internationally and domestically. At the top of 2020, she closed out Xavier Omär’s tour before jetting off on her own. Not to mention she’s also slated to perform at Afropunk Paris in July. For Rose, being an opener was a challenge she embraced. “It’s that confidence of coming to a crowd that may or may not be familiar with me, and then winning people over,” she reminisces. As far as being a headliner goes, “when you’re there and you know that everybody there is there for you? That is a completely different vibe.”
When introducing fans to her unique sound, she starts with her 2019 single, “August 5th.” The dynamic songbird explained, “it kinda spells out my life and is one of my favorite records. The whole To Myself album is me kinda putting it all on the line and ‘August 5th’ is the cherry on top, but everything I do is vulnerable or very prideful. It’s on a spectrum, but it’s never fabricated.”
To Myself was birthed post-breakup. She dubbed it a “catalyst,” but also it’s “a stake that I put in the ground. Pushing against all of the things that I don’t really see is a perpetual thing that I’m surrendering to in this journey. Overall, the sonic value, production, writing, the way I’m singing, me just really not giving a f**k is what To Myself is.”
Rose also feels it’s imperative to foster relationships with her female industry-mates. “It’s absolutely wonderful to have amazing personal relationships. To be able to have that community and even for me, being able to bring Davionne on tour with me. We were both on [Revenge Of The Dreamers III] and now, we’re both Grammy-nominated. Snoh offered me advice for Tiny Desk, which really altered the way we rehearse and she didn’t have to do that. Ari really opened up space for me to go on my first tour, which was a catalyst for touring, and festivals,” she says.
Now, though, she’s settling into her new normal of getting “creative as f**k” to offset any projected boredom. Despite domestic life being an underlying theme on To Myself, Rose stated, “I kinda fell into that. That was never the plan.” For her, it was more about comfortability, but she now has a more developed idea of how to manage this expectation in future relationships.
“I don’t have any desire at the present moment to slow down my momentum, but I love love. I grew up on love. I always place that highest on the totem pole of life. Having love, having connections — I think that’s why I think this whole isolation thing is pretty f**king difficult, but it is what it is. As long as I’m on this Earth, I’m going to create, love fully, live in love, learn and grow.”
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
