COVER FEATURE MUSIC
“Finding the right label was difficult as well. I released something on my own before and it’s just incredibly hard; it’s too much work and I’d rather be working on creative stuff than business all the time. My label is really amazing. This was the first time nobody questioned anything. They didn’t want any compromise. I was like, ’This is the work,’ and they didn’t change anything. And the less you compromise, the better your work is going to be,” Shilpa explains. And so on Thanksgiving last year, Shilpa decided on an untraditional album cover photoshoot—she put on a monkey costume and ran around town accompanied by photographer Ebru Yildiz and her husband, who was assisting. “We went to Palace Bar, and a gas station in Queens and to a diner in Queens and to a diner in Greenpoint. I had cab drivers stopping and asking if they could take a picture of me for their Instagram. But most people were like ‘Okay, so she’s in the costume, and so what.’ A woman in a diner was like, ‘I’ve seen worse.’”
Shilpa Ray’s new album Last Year’s Savage came out on May 19 at Northern Spy Recording. Download it at shilparay. net or at northernspyrecords.com/music/ lastyearssavage/ photo: Katarina Hybenova
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