IN 2010, MALINA MOYE became the first African-American woman to perform the National Anthem on guitar at a professional sports event, a match-up between the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys. She’s gone on to play the anthem at other events since then, but she treasures the memory of the first time she walked on a football field with her Strat. “People were freaking out, like, ‘Jimi Hendrix did that years ago. Can this girl really do it?’” she recalls. “I didn’t look at it like that. I was just excited that I was asked to play. Little did I know it would be a historical moment.”
On her 2009 debut, , Moye established herself as a forceful and imaginative singer, songwritercapable of blending R&B, pop, funk, hip-hop and rock in a way that sounded seamless. Her audience grew with subsequent releases, the 2014 EP and the 2019 full-length . Now she’s set to make her biggest splash yet with (WCE Records), a power-packed and musically diverse collection of inspirational originals (and one sublime Led Zeppelin cover) that suggests she’s just beginning to hit her stride.
