The relatively anonymous illadub sent me an e-mail telling me about Asia Cruise, a multi-ethnic [Asian, Native American, White] Jacksonville Pop/R&B artist signed onto Jive Records. The way she was marketed was interesting – her music was leaked first onto MySpace with music, but without any photographs – only a female silhouette with a title, “who is Asia Cruise?” and a countdown to her video. Bloggers questioned her identity – at least until the video that came out for her song, “Selfish”:
She talks about her initial identity being a mystery on her MySpace page:
I know some of you are wondering why the big mystery. Well, to be honest with you, it really didn’t start that way. The whole “Who Is Asia Cruise” was more of a question to myself. When I started working on the album, the main question that kept poppin up was “Who is Asia?” I really wanted to pick songs that reflected me and who I am…so when you listen to the album, you’ll definitely get a sense of who I am. Then I wanted everyone to like me for my music instead of my image. That was really important to me. So, we decided to take a risk and not put my face out there and GUESS what? Ya’ll love my music!!
Okay, so I’m 31 and her links to teenmusic.com make me feel incredibly old, but the A&R guy in me believes Asia Cruise actually has a fighting chance of being a successful artist. The Asian activist in me wonders if the marketing of her music before her video is to prevent her from being typecast as an Asian artist, which haven’t had much success in mainstream radio. Nonetheless, I’ll be channeling the sixteen year old girl inside me and listen to this song repeatedly the next time I go through a break-up.
