'VIRILE,' MOSES SUMNEY

"What's the version that can feel positive and generative and good?" He growled theatrically, then laughed. Since Sumney self-released his first EP in 2014, he has seemed like an avatar of everything the culturally sensitive modern musician should be. By 2017, when he released his deb...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New York times magazine 2021-03, p.40-8
Main Author: Goodman, Lizzy
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
Carson, Ben
Musical recordings
Personal profiles
Songwriters
Sumney, Moses
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:"What's the version that can feel positive and generative and good?" He growled theatrically, then laughed. Since Sumney self-released his first EP in 2014, he has seemed like an avatar of everything the culturally sensitive modern musician should be. By 2017, when he released his debut album and moved from Los Angeles into the mountains outside Asheville, N.C., Sumney had even started to feel shackled by his own Next Big Thing status, exhausted by what he saw as a music world that was "trying to either imprint an identity on me or get me to claim one in order to sell me." Born in San Bernardino and raised by Ghanaian pastor parents, he was the only Black kid in a Christian elementary school; then, in 2001, his family moved back to Accra, which made him the only American kid in an African high school. [...]everything that has happened since has just been Sumney's attempt to make sense of that moment, when his private self became public.
ISSN:0028-7822