Ani DiFranco

Ani DiFranco (pronounced "AHH-nee") (born Angela Marie Difranco on September 23, 1970) is a progressive singer, guitarist, and songwriter. DiFranco is prolific, having produced three studio albums of new material and one remix album just in 1999 (see list below). She has released at least one album every year since 1990, except in 2000 (perhaps because she released three albums in 1999 and a double album in 2001.)

Label Independence

The success of her record label, Righteous Babe Records (RBR), is also notable. Ownership of RBR allows DiFranco a great deal of artistic freedom, including the ability to release as much, and as often, as she has, and to include controversial material and language. References to her independence from major labels appear occasionally in her songs, most notably in "The Million You Never Made," which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing", a song from the early Not So Soft album which describes an imagined meeting with a label headhunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon," on the album Dilate, which sympathises sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label. A longstanding rumor, apparently begun by Spin Magazine in 1997, suggests that the friend addressed in "Napoleon" is the musician Suzanne Vega; Vega herself has denied this http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.music.artists.ani-difranco/msg/f8cf4eef04c30307?dmode=source&hl=en.

Related Topics:
Record label - Righteous Babe Records - ''Not So Soft'' - Dilate - Spin Magazine - 1997 - Suzanne Vega

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DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. DiFranco is proud of her label, which employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to Ms. magazine http://www.columbia.edu/~marg/ani/letter.html she expressed displeasure that what she sees as a way to ensure her own artistic freedom, was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.

Related Topics:
Prince - 1997 - Ms. magazine

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