UNFORGETTABLE

With Dirty, Malina Moye leaves an indelible record of her singular style.

- JOE BOSSO

IN 2010, MALINA MOYE became the first African-American woman to perform the National Anthem on guitar at a professional sports event, a match-up between the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys. She's gone on to play the anthem at other events since then, but she treasures the memory of the first time she walked on a football field with her Strat. "People were freaking out, like, 'Jimi Hendrix did that years ago. Can this girl really do it?" she recalls.

"I didn't look at it like that. I was just excited that I was asked to play. Little did I know it would be a historical moment." On her 2009 debut, Diamonds & Guitars, Moye established herself as a forceful and imaginative singer, songwriter and guitarist, capable of blending R&B, pop, funk, hip-hop and rock in a way that sounded seamless. Her audience grew with subsequent releases, the 2014 EP Rock & Roll Baby and the 2019 full-length Bad as I Wanna Be. Now she's set to make her biggest splash yet with Dirty (WCE Records), a power-packed and musically diverse collection of inspirational originals (and one sublime Led Zeppelin cover) that suggests she's just beginning to hit her stride.

"The album is songs, stories and guitar solos," Moye says with a laugh. "It's funny, because people always tell you to pick a lane as an artist, but I was never comfortable with that. I play rock, I play soul, I play funk - that's the Malina Moye sound. I can't be in one box. It's like I always say, 'The notes don't know they're supposed to be in a box.""

The rhythm-guitar sound on some of new album's tracks is pretty brutal and direct. It's almost got an EDM-like heaviness.