Shemekia Copeland

Blues vocalist Shemekia Copeland is a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also proves capable of a subtler range of emotions when she strays outside the lines of the blues tradtions. Her 1998 Alligator debut, Turn the Heat Up!, featured a career-elevating version of her father's classic "Ghetto Child." By the time she gave birth to her first child in 2017 and released America's Child a year later, she had transformed herself into a mature artist who could inhabit virtually any musical genre without sacrificing the power and passion that established her reputation. 2020's Uncivil War reflected poignantly on America's racial and cultural divide, while 2022's Done Come Too Far balanced the music and themes of her previous two outings, completing an unofficial topical trilogy. Two years later, Copeland returned to the blues with Blame It on Eve.