“Getting real with myself is always the cure.”
It all started when…
SOULDEGA: Who are you, where are you from and what inspires you to sing?
SIDIBE: My name is Sidibe and I’m American-Senegalese via Louisiana. Knowing that I can bring beauty to the world inspires me to sing. Just being alive inspires me to sing. Every emotion and experience carries with it a song.
SOULDEGA: When did you first realize singing was your passion?
SIDIBE: Singing is like breathing for me. There was never a time when I didn’t feel like singing was a part of who I am. As a little girl, I was creating songs as soon as I could form sentences. When I was 5 years old, I won my first talent show and literally dropped the mic at the end of my song.
SOULDEGA: You have an amazing discography which includes your albums Metaphysical, You got the luck, and Reckless Abandon. What does your creative process look like when producing a body of work?
SIDIBE: It’s interesting, but I always have this inner knowing when I’m entering into a new creative phase. I’m often inspired by the music I’m listening to at the time. My songs are very autobiographical and I usually find that I suffer from writer's block when I’m not tapping into my own personal experiences. Getting real with myself is always the cure. From that point on, it flows. Once I get the story down, my creative partner Nico and I begin the recording process. We spend hours and hours in the studio and there has never been a time when it wasn't fun - thankfully.
SOULDEGA: We love your classic style in presentation and how you explore your creativity such as with your latest single and video, “Place for you and I” where you incorporate animation And most recently “Reckless Abandon (Acoustic). What was that experience like for you?
SIDIBE: Recording the video for Reckless Abandon was the best experience! I wanted to keep things simple, so I had a friend record the video on my iPhone. It felt effortless and authentic. The song just screams desert vibes and I love being outside in nature, so I definitely felt like I was in my element. I have also discovered I have a deep love for sparkles, so it was basically a dream come true!
SOULDEGA: How would you say the pandemic and current racial uprising has effect your work?
SIDIBE: I think this challenging time has inspired me to dive even deeper into my own world. Music and books have been my refuge. There’s a lot of fear, distraction and division right now and it’s easy to forget about the lightness of life. It’s easy to get sucked into the media madness. It’s easy to lose hope. That's why I think it’s so important to remind people that things like imagination, romance and magic are still important. It’s okay to want to get lost in love for a moment. We need that. What I hope to do is offer people a space of beauty. That’s been my goal from the beginning, but it feels even more important to me now. And personally, that’s the space I want to be in now.
SOULDEGA: If you could do a duet with any artist living or deceased, who would it be?
SIDIBE: Man, that’s a really hard question. I'm going to pick someone who’s living with hope that I might manifest it! I would love to sing with Andrea Bocelli! He has so many great duets and I absolutely love his voice and spirit. Actually, when I wrote “Reckless Abandon", I imagined it as a duet with him. That’s definitely a dream of mine.