Dua Upa’s brow is furrowed, as if she is trying to crack a particularly knotty trigonometry problem. On a cloudy May afternoon, she stands behind a stately vintage mixing desk in Manhattan’s exclusive Jungle City Studios with folded arms and a wide stance as $40,000 speakers blast out her effervescent, currently unfinished, theme song for Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s DayGlo study of life in plastic. “I can take the heat / baby best believe, that’s the moment I shine,” she sings, her words punctuated by handclaps. With ribbony strings and bass that sizzles, it brilliantly deploys every rule in the disco-funk playbook to hit your hedonic hotspots with a sledgehammer. As the song unfurls, I follow her gaze through a window to the studio’s spacious live room - less of a…
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Dazed & Confused (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2023