Following her opening slot on Rihanna’s tour last year, 23 year-old Ke$ha was more than ready to step out on her own and headline her own tour. Invincible and cocky beyond her years, she’s now taking the reins and mopping up the stage with her California sun-bleached locks, and bringing in a fresh and ballsy attitude to the teeny-bopper scene. Her “Get $leazy Tour” hits Vegas with a performance on May 7th at The Pearl in the Palms Resort and Casino, which should be filled with high-pitched screams of preteen Ke$ha wannabes dressed like streetwalkers and willing to “brush with a bottle of Jack” – anything to get a glimpse of the 6’ 1” singer with the fashion model figure. It’s a dire moment for teens and preteens across the nation, as they put their local radio station’s number on their cell phone speed dial in order to be the ‘winning caller’ to receive free tickets to Ke$ha’s live show. Fans have been nonstop singing “Tik Tok” since the mega-smash hit album Animal hit the airwaves. Even more popular are the thousands of homemade videos uploaded on YouTube of Ke$ha fans making their own video versions of the hit song. Her latest EP, Cannibal, is more of the same highly-produced pop/tech dance music, and at first glance, Ke$ha may appear like a Bratz doll playing rock star, but as you dig a little deeper into her candid lyrics, you just may find some depth to her writing, some teenage experimentation and outlook of today’s adolescents. The lyric: “You can’t imagine the immensity of the fuck I’m not giving,” is a window to the youth of today: spoiled, apathetic, insatiable with technology, empowered with powerless convictions, uninterested, lazy, sexually jaded and promiscuous, insolent, and embittered at the world… But hey, it’s a PAHRTY!

Born Kesha Rose Sebert, the singer/songwriter has never swayed from her desired path to stardom. She remembers the video of herself at age five, naked and covered in body paint, saying:

“I’m going to be a rock star and there’s no way anyone is going to stop me!”

But that’s not to say that it’s been an easy ride to the top. Born in 1987 (during a party in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley) to former punk-rock singer/songwriter, Pebe, the young Ke$ha struggled with her mom and older brother through some difficult times. On welfare and food stamps at the time, Ke$ha can remember one of her first memories of her mom telling her: “If you want something, just take it.” By ’91 Pebe had landed a new publishing deal which brought them to back to the place where Pebe originally got her start in music: the country music-lovers city, Nashville. Hanging out in studios and listening to story-songs from the veteran songwriters of Nashville is where Ke$ha’s love for country music and her heart and soul of songwriting began. She took songwriting classes at a music school in the Tennessee countryside, where she recalls some of the children not having any shoes, and kept her eye on her dream that seemed not so terribly far away each time she was brought into the studio to sing on her mother Pebe’s tracks. Pebe supported her daughter’s dream, telling her that she had a good voice and to practice singing. So Ke$ha sang all the time.

At 17, Ke$ha quit high school to move back to L.A. and pursue her music, surprisingly though, since she had been enrolled in an International Baccalaureate program and was set to go to Columbia University to study psychology. But she made a brave veer to the left when she came to that fork in the road, and it definitely paid off. Soon after, she met Dr. Luke. “I had been looking for a female artist with an incredible, distinctive voice who had her own style,” Luke remembers. “Ke$ha didn’t sound like anybody else.” Dr. Luke happened to be working on a track at the time for hip-hop artist Flo Rida’s second album. Hanging out in the studio once again paid off when Flo Rida asked her to
lay down a vocal on what would become his No. 1 hit, “Right Round” and helped soar her career from a ‘nobody’ to the sassy and brazen singer/songwriter that she is today.

With her deep-rooted love for storytelling and a peculiar fascination for transvestites, the pop princess with the bad attitude brings her irreverent lyrics to what is now her stage, with her songs, and her name in lights…sounds like she’s living her dream. Congratulations, Ke$ha, you’re one of the very few to go in search of that star and actually grab it by the balls and claim it as all yours. SLV

Issue 58 featuring: Jade Bryce, Markesa Yeager & Taylor Vixen