BLACK SOUL MEDIA S1E1: Corin’s Musical Awakening (2020)
[Originally Published on June 11, 2020]
Corin lays sunbathing in the grass, watching the clouds float by like melodies in the sky. “You know the crazy thing about birds, bro?” she asks me through the phone. “No, I don’t. What’s up, sis?” I ask, expecting a metaphor about their wings as I rummage through my notes. “When you hear them sing, they’re never off key,” she says. I stare more intently at my phone and nod as if she could see me. “It’s insane to me that birds don’t have to learn to sing or adjust their voices like people do,” she continues. “It’s just in their nature,” I add. “Yes, and maybe this is a metaphor for life. Maybe nature is exactly as it should be, and humans are the ones who need to get it together,” she says, as I hear a gust of wind brush by her in confirmation. My grin takes up half of my face. I should’ve known better by now. With R&B and Neo Soul singer Corin Gabriella, you can always expect the unexpected.
The Brooklyn native was born to Puerto Rican parents who grew up in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip hop. Her father regularly performed the congas as her mother conjured up spirits with her dance. Her pops was naturally musically inclined, but the passion that fueled his gift transformed from drugs to religion as a result of her mother’s spiritual influence. With two parents who lived by music, Corin was ordained to be an instrumentalist long before she was conceived. “By the time the I was born, there was no not playing an instrument. I had to be in it,” she says.
While it was evident that music was her vehicle, Corin’s family couldn’t have imagined that vocals would be her engine. A Biggie stan and music connoisseur, her big sister Erica pushed her everyday when she caught wind that she could blow. Corin began to sing in churches of all sizes across her supportive community, captivating the congregations with her vocal maturity and emotive ability. Her interpretations were precariously soulful, which came from looping The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on her MP3 disk player. Lauryn Hill is an instrumentalist, which shines through in her piercing vocals. She also admired the spiritual connection R&B queen Mary J. Blige had to her music. The church was Corin’s musical stage and personal safe haven until tragedy set in and she began to learn more about her identity.
Around the age of 13, Corin lost her favorite uncle to HIV. Overwhelmed by hurt and confusion, Corin began to question her religion. “It seemed like there couldn’t be a God if all this was happening,” she says, referencing the misery and pain in the world and the vibrant boy’s death. Corin and Stephanie took to drinking and smoking to escape their grief, and the congregation that once praised her as the golden child began to treat them both like rusted copper. Additionally, her church group kicked her out and ostracized her for being homosexual, which led to a major personal and musical crisis. “I had to figure out how to do music without God,” she remembers. Her journey required her to take it back to the streets.
Corin was pulled left and right to hop on up and coming rappers tracks to provide soulful hooks. She never said no. “I didn’t want to turn down an opportunity to use my gift and spread my message,” she says. Working with so many artists and engaging the Brooklyn musical community heavily eventually led her to an Atlantic Records studio with powerful execs hanging on her every inflection. She was brought to the studio to perform with a local rapper, who showed up drugged out and belligerently drunk. He could barely stand, let alone perform. The execs left the room as he struggled through the first of three tracks on their demo. This opportunity was blown, but she left encouraged and convicted in her purpose. “I knew I was supposed to be there. Just not with them,” she concludes. The ordeal also introduced her to her current partner in crime: her coproducer and manager Richard.
Richard is a tall, broad-shouldered black man who pitched a new genre of Ghetto Rock and Roll to label execs over two decades ago. They shut him down and essentially blackballed him from the industry, citing that his music was too forward thinking for black people. Other than booking quaint gigs for his rapper mentees, Richard was ready to be done with music completely before meeting with Corin. Hearing her passion and soulfulness reinvigorated his own. Now the duo works in tandem; Corin provides the lyrics, freestyles, and melodies; Richard bends and molds those words into exquisite compositions. This led to the creation of “Recipe”, which Richard reinterpreted from a Trap record to freeing Dancehall. The music video landed on MTV Jams and BET Soul in 2019. Corin had found her voice.
Since her days as the golden child in church, Corin has been met with equal support and opposition. Label execs and music distributors will often criticize her sound for being too broad. However, being essentially genreless speaks to this artist’s dexterity and universal dopeness. Like her manager Richard, she’s been told she’s thinking too far ahead and black people won’t understand. They’ve been proven wrong at every turn. Executives have told her she needs to hide her sexuality and straighten her hair for a chance at succeeding in the industry. They push her to appeal to traditional femininity and beauty standards. As a Latinx queer woman, she faces enormous pressure from all angles to conform. Corin aims to set an example for people like her niece, who has a huge curly fro and smiles with abandon. “I choose to live as myself instead of a projection. There’s God in your uniqueness,” she says.
Corin references the skit in The Miseducation where the classroom ponders what love is. I ask her for her interpretation of the mysterious word. “I can’t say for sure bro, but I know it starts with the self,” she shrugs. As one of our mutual favorite artists once said, “How you gonna win when you ain’t right within?”
