At 22 years-old, Ms. Palmer is just starting to show us what she’s working it. From her budding music career to her starring roles and historic accolades (she was the first African-American woman to play Cinderella on Broadway), she shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Despite her fame, she comes across as a well-rounded, intelligent, aware and grounded woman who also just happens to hustles her ass off and push boundaries. It’s wonderful that she’s already bold enough to express herself at such a young age when women are often taught to be silent, nice and invisible, something she encourages women to push back against.
In her recent interview for The Fader, KeKe touched on a few things, including her open and honest Snapchat as well as he importance of not accepting the shame that society likes to place on young women for expressing our sexuality–something she’s says she just got “tired of” as well as a film she’s writing about about two female stoner buddies.:
On Not accepting The Shame That Society Likes To Place On Young Women For Expressing Our Sexuality.
“I’m a big quote person and I saw this quote that said, ‘I let it go because it was too heavy.’ That’s really it. It was just simply too heavy. I remember the first time that I lost my virginity, really the first thought that I had was, ‘Thank God it’s gone.’ Meaning I felt like in order to be who I was, I had to hold onto a virginity that made me more of a woman than the next or any more of a good girl than the next. It was as if I put all these societal holds on myself when in actuality, it didn’t do anything but make me more unhappy, more stressed and more pressured. Then I realized, John, James, Jessica, Betty… whoever else, they’re not going to bed with me at night. I’m going to bed with me at night. I just felt like, you know what? I’m going to express myself in the way that I feel comfortable and anyone wants to judge—then screw them. That’s really how I felt because I got so tired of everyone trying to tell me how to be. It just got really, old.”
On Expressing That Same Message In Her Music
“Sometimes it sounds like attitude, love making, sometimes it sounds like I’m just having fun. It’ll be different expressions of that but all of these things that we feel or we don’t always talk about it. A lot of it’s the strength that isn’t expressed or isn’t shown in young women that I want to express. ‘I Don’t Belong To You‘ wasn’t just that to situation. [It] was about every young girl in America, most young girls think that way. I’m happy because I feel like a part of the generation that is really working towards breaking down those social issues and I think that we can attribute some of that to the social media era because you’re able to get to young people who think the way you think. So for me, ‘I Don’t Belong To You,’ was like every girl out there that’s tired of their family, society or anyone trying to control their individuality. And every young guy too. I’m a girl so I can really tell from a female perspective but guys too.”
On Her Black Female Stoner Film
“‘The Keke Palmer Project’ is the working title. It’s a project for me that I wanted to do with my homegirl that allowed me to showcase a young female, specifically a young African-American female in a way that we haven’t seen. We don’t often get to see that funny, goofy, silly and young side. So, the movie is a mix between a Friday and a Pineapple Express. So it’s about two female stoners, Lauren and Ariel who end up getting caught in some type of scandal. I don’t want to give you everything but the movie is about their journey of finding their way and coming of age and where they want to go and who they want to be in their lives. It’s a coming of age story with the backdrop of some action-packed stuff and funny young folks stuff.”
Read the rest of her interview at The Fader.
