The Infamous LP LP's vulnerable, irreverent pop hits Edge Fest BY GABE ALLEN
I
n 2007, LP had already spent a year-and-ahalf on L.A. Reid’s label, Island Def Jam Music Group, and she had no album to show for it. No one knew what to do with her. She dressed like Mick Jagger, belted melodies like Mariah and walked into every room like she owned the place (and might steal your girlfriend too). “They put me off in like four different musical directions,” LP tells BandWagon. “I don't think they could deal with what I looked like and what I sounded like.” After the label executives took her off the road, LP spent months writing song after song spanning folk, hard rock, indie and pop. Finally, fed up with trying to find her sound, they told her she would have to perform in a perverse iteration of a battle of the bands to keep her spot with the company. “Jay-Z was there and L.A. Reid and everybody. They made me perform three or four songs in completely disparate directions with these studio guys as my backing band,” she says. “Then they brought up all these Fall Out Boy type bands. I was one of the artists dropped at the end of the session.” Fourteen years later, none of the Fall Out Boy sound-alikes are of note, but LP is at the height of her career as an international pop star. She has billions of streams to her name and devout fans from Italy to Poland, Mexico and all over the world. “It went from ‘who do you think you are?’ to ‘who are you?’,” she says. It almost seems like she’s gloating — her last two music videos have featured bacchanalian celebrations with posses of models in picturesque locations. After years of grinding, she has earned a good time and she’s here to party. On August 28, LP will bring the party to Edge Fest 2021, a multimedia outdoor arts festival in the hip, burgeoning West Edge district of Cheyenne, WY. In its 6th year, Edge Fest pledges to keep it “free to the beautiful people of the front range of Colorado and Wyoming,” with LP and Tai Verdes, plus local bands, art, food and beer to fuel the festival feel.
14
