New In Your Ear

Emerging Female Music Artists

You need to know now what everyone else will figure out later. You want to hear tomorrow’s hitmakers today. In fact, you’re probably looking for something better in your toys, boys or girls and music. Here are two new hot emerging female musicians.

Winning raves and climbing the charts, these female artists are emerging as the next big things. With unique visions, haunting voices and passionate perspectives, they embody the best of what’s fun, fearless and female.

Dance hits with depth. Honeyed heartache. If you want to dance your way through your pain, then Wynter Gordon is the artist for you. Having written hits for top selling artists, it’s now Wynter’s turn in the spotlight. Although she’s performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Wynter’s debut album is full of hard-hitting dance tunes, infused with real life sincerity. With her tracks “Surveillance” and “Renegade” atop of the club and radio request lists.

Wynter Call Out: “Music is my passion and my life, but it is also a door to do something else. It is an opportunity to raise awareness and actually help people, and that’s where I want to go,” says Wynter.


22-year-old, Dublin-born Laura Izibor combines style, substance and soul in her debut album, “Let the Truth Be Told.” One of Rolling Stone Magazine’s Artist To Watch in 2009, Essence Magazine’s “Best New Artist”, Vibe’s “Next” Artist and VH1 Soul You Oughta Know Artist, Izibor’s songs have been featured on some of today’s most popular movies and TV shows. Mixing R&B and funk, Izibor creates a universally modern sound in her piano-driven songs about love, life and loss. Know as “The Soul of Ireland” Hill has sold-out shows in Ireland, and opened for some of the biggest names in Soul, R&B and Hip-Hop. If you’re looking for a dose of sexy, modern soul, give a listen to Laura Izibor.

Call out: “The foundation begins with soul,” explains 21-year-old singer/songwriter/producer Laura Izibor of her passionate, piano-guided songs.

Who's a Superfreak?

This ad launched a couple of months ago, and never fails to make me smile. Visa launched "Music," a feel-good commercial promoting the use of Visa Debit as a secure way to make online purchases. Athletes, businessmen, bikers, prom-goers and cowboys sing a line from Rick James' "Superfreak." The spot ends with a woman using her Visa Debit card to purchase the song online. "Who isn't a little freaky," asks voiceover actor Morgan Freeman. See the ad here, created by TBWA/Chiat/Day:

Rick James, Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, will forever be remembered as the King of Funk. Rick James entered the world as James Ambrose Johnson Jr. on February 1, 1948 in Buffalo, N.Y., the third oldest child in a family of eight. He broke many cultural taboos by flaunting his extravagant lifestyle. As an icon of drug use and eroticism, Rick James went further than anyone had gone before. But before long, his lifestyle started to catch up with him.

"Superfreak" was a 1981 hit single produced and performed by

Rick James for the Motown label. The song was a big hit for James, charting on the pop, R&B and dance charts in the U.S. On the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the song peaked at #16 in the fall of 1981 and spent 10 weeks in the top 40. The term superfreak (and the term freak from which it descended) is slang. Freak and super freak are both references to a woman who enjoys sex, perhaps (but not necessarily) a woman who is promiscuous, is willing to experiment sexually, or is hyper-sexualized. In common use either term can simply refer to a woman. The slang term get freaky (to act sexually) derives from the same root as well.