The Blessed Madonna: from raves to Dua Lipa (and back)

If today there are artists like the Belgian Charlotte de Wittethe Russian Nina Kravitzthe South Korean Peggy Gou and also “ours” Victoria De Angelis with their DJ sets they conquer the most prestigious slots on the billboards of the great international festivals, the credit is also theirs. The Blessed Madonna, real name Tide Stamper46 years old, has helped challenge gender stereotypes in the DJ world. Together with colleagues such as the German Ellen Allien (55 years old, born in West Berlin twenty years before the fall of the wall, at the beginning of the 1990s she was among the first female DJs to make inroads into a scene historically dominated by men ), the American DJ

proved that women can have a significant impact on electronic music and that talent and creativity are genderless. “Godspeed”, his first album, which will be released on October 18, is both a testament to his influence on the scene and a tribute to his musical roots, which lie in the underground electronic scene.

Left from Kentucky when at the end of the 90s I started selling his compilations to raves organized in Louisvillehas also managed to conquer one of the queens of new pop like Dua Lipa. It was 2020 when his popularity exploded after years of apprenticeship, thanks to the collaboration with the pop star of Kosovan origins on a remix of “Levitating” together with Madonna ea Missy Elliott By the way: the stage name has nothing to do with the Queen of Pop, but with her close relationship with Catholicism.

Yes, because despite – among other things – she is also an LGBTQ+ activist, who quotes Virgina Woolf in interviews and says that she is “not a woman”, that she has “never found a term to define herself” and that she has a “mind adrogynous” in which “two powers coexist, one male and one female”, The Blessed Madonna is a fervent Catholic. .She initially called herself The Black Madonna: “A name that was a reflection of my family’s deep and abiding Catholic devotion to a specific type of dark-coloured European icon of the Virgin Mary,” he told the Guardian. A petition accusing her of cultural appropriation prompted her to change her stage name to The Blessed Madonna.

Dua Lipa, whom he met for the first time when in 2018 – two years after the specialized magazine Mixmag elected Stamper DJ of the Year – she remixed “Electricity”, the hit created by the pop star together with Mark Ronson and Diplo, defined it as one of the main sources of inspiration for the sound universe of “Club future nostalgia”the remix album of his 2020 album, released during the pandemic months: “It was the perfect opportunity to create something like that.

I had all the time in the world. I think that was the moment I was able to rally everyone, especially The Blessed Madonna, who would have been on tour at the time if there hadn’t been the pandemic.” In November of that year Dua Lipa also wanted The Blessed Madonna in the cast of “Studio 2054”, the show broadcast in live streaming worldwide with which she presented the remix album from the Printworks headquarters in London. .Dua Lipa is not among the guests of “Godspeed”. On the other hand there is another pop goddess, Kylie Minogue. Together they created “Edge of Saturday night”which in addition to being included in The Blessed Madonna’s album will also be part of “Tension II”, Minogue’s new album, also released on October 18th.

Kylie is the only megastar present among the guests of the twenty-four tracks of “Godspeed”, written in three years: for the rest, The Blessed Madonna he wanted at his side names who represent the beating heart of the US underground scene such as Jamie Principle and A-Trak, talented emerging artists such as Joy Anonymous and non-mainstream singers such as Danielle Ponder, Jacob Lusk and Joy Crookes. The 43 minutes of music, including electronic, techno, pop, soul and r&b, sweep away all prejudices, which in the case of The Blessed Madonna were among the heaviest. Some gossip in the industry claimed that there were “ghost” male DJs behind her productions and that The Blessed Madonna was just an extra: “If you are a woman and exceed a certain threshold of power that people think you are not “allowed” to have, punishments are triggered”, she says today.