“This is a love letter from my coochie to you guys!”
The crowd erupted in cheers, and I, with my asexual pride flag draped around my neck, began to feel increasingly out of place.
But regardless, I can appreciate a good sex song when I hear it, and DEJA proved that she could knock them out of the park with relative ease.
Think Ariana Grande at her most hip-hop influenced, add some beastly basslines (even she was surprised by how heavy the bass was at one point!) and mix that with a bubbly, rap focussed performance, and you’d have a close to perfect match with what DEJA brought to Cambridge Pride.
Indeed, the Ari comparison is unavoidable given the similarities between the lyrical cadence of the hook of DEJA’s opening song ‘Losing Game’ and AG’s ‘Monopoly’ that stood out like a sore thumb. The comparison could have reached a point of being distracting if it wasn’t for the fact that DEJA’s boundless energy and surprisingly unique songwriting felt distinct and uniquely hers by the end.
‘Mulan’ was an easy high point, taking the ‘no shits given’ attitude of the title character and gloriously recontextualising it into a direct and venomous anthem to breaking rules that got all the Disney fans (including me) pumped up.
Her closing track ‘Boujee’, a jittery ode to self-love, was revealing of the fine line DEJA walks in both her performance and songwriting: never sexual, always sexy.