t2 recommends Aaradhna

Between Thursday evening’s Latin Grammy Awards and Monday morning’s American Music Awards, we have missed what ‘Brown Girl’ had to say. New Zealand-based R&B artiste Aaradhna Jayantilal Patel’s (known simply as Aaradhna) speech after receiving the Best Album in the Urban and Hip Hop category at Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards at Auckland’s Vector Arena on Thursday evening delivered a punch: “So this song is Brown Girl and it speaks on many things. It speaks on racism and being placed in a box and for me, I feel like if I was to accept this, I would feel like I’m not being truthful in my song.”

Who’s Aaradhna?
The 32-year-old’s father Jayanti Patel is from Navsari, Gujarat, while her mother Sia’a Patel is Samoan from Papa Uta. Already four albums old, her latest is Brown Girl which released this year. Going by her Instagram account (@aaradhna), she is a fan of the soul-R&B singer Sam Cooke.

What’s Brown Girl about?
“Love, heartbreak and life in general. Brown Girl represents growth for me,” she recently told online music magazine GoodMusicAllDay.

How were her growing-up years?
In June the singer posted a message on Twitter (@AaradhnaPatel): “Growing up as an Indian and Samoan New Zealander, I’ve seen and witnessed others including myself being automatically ‘labeled’ for what we look like, what we wore, the way we spoke, where we resided. I’ve been called a curry muncher, a dumb coconut, all kinds of names in the book while growing up and I’ve always felt like I was looked down on.... Brown Girl is a song about racism. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t happen in my world because it does.”

What did she do with the award?
Declining the Best Album in the Urban and Hip Hop award, she gave it to her fellow nominees, SWIDT.

Meanwhile, stream...
Brown Girl, Lorena Bobbitt, I Love You Too, Great Man, Wake Up