Dula Peep recently did an interview with The Guardian to promote her new album Radical Optimism, and the singer, who has vastly improved in her live performances revealed that the infamous meme poking fun at her left her feeling "humiliated."
“When people took that snippet of me dancing online and just turned it into a meme, and then when I won the best new artist GRAMMY and people were like, ‘She’s not deserving of it, she’s got no stage presence, she’s not going to stick around.’ Those things were hurtful. It was humiliating… In the public eye, I was figuring out who I was as an artist, as a performer. All that was happening while I was 22, 23 years old and still growing up. You have to build tough skin. You have to be resilient.”
In the beginning of her career Dua was serving lackluster stage presence realness on stage.
However you can't deny that she has vastly improved as a performer, and is slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with as a burgeoning pop star.
I feel for this new generation that doesn't get the opportunity to figure out who they are and develop their craft without social media scrutinizing her every move.
With that being said, after listening to Radical Optimism on Friday I was left underwhelmed. The album has a few bops (Houdini, Falling Forever, Illusion, Training Season) but overall the record is incoherent, and just lacked enough punch for me to fully love it.
In case you never saw the performance as well as her growth as a performer, check both down below, and her interview with The Guardian here.
UPDATE: As a bonus I'm also posting her performances on SNL last night.