NPR R&B/Soul

The Austin 100: Baby Rose

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM EDT

Hometown:Washington, D.C.

Genre:R&B

Why We're Excited:Baby Rose's voice is a remarkable instrument: It dispenses weary, heartsick ache with the deep blues of a woman trice her age. You'd never pin down the D.C. native's age at 25 — unless you'd seen her revelatory Tiny Desk performance, of course — but everything about Baby Rose's soulful, wounded R&B feels out of time in the best way.

Listen to Baby Rose's "All to Myself"

Tags

NPR R&B/Soul

Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

See stories by Stephen Thompson