Milwaukee’s Britney Freeman-Farr, who performs under the name B-Free, startled a lot of her fans when she announced she was pregnant not long ago. It turned out to be the R&B singer’s unique way of announcing she had a new album coming out.
The record, called “Ode 2 a Luv Affair,” came out last month and features 13 songs she produced and performed herself, with a few collaborations on individual tracks. It came on the heels of some health challenges that jeopardized her ability to sing.
"For me the album was definitely therapeutic in creating, because it was in the midst of my healing process from what I was going through with recovering from my vocal trauma that I experienced," says Freeman-Farr. "So just being able to kind of create everything in a sense was therapy for me 'cause even though I wasn't quite where I left off, I was still where I wanted to be in that moment."
Freeman-Farr also says her music can also be therapeutic for her listeners. "Every song has a specific topic that can either make people feel better based on the music or the vibe, or just make them feel better based on the lyrical content," she says.
One of the songs from the album is about domestic abuse. It's called, "No More," and although B~Free hasn't experienced physical abuse, she has been in emotionally abusive relationships. She decided to create this song as a way of coping with her own feelings about the abuse she's endured, while encouraging people to be strong in the face of abuse.
"Seeing that and honing in on my own experience, I kind of just wanted to create a martyr, a song that would be a martyr for standing up for yourself," she says. "And even though physical and emotional abuse can be very different, they're still sort of similar in the sense of somebody else having control over you. I wanted to create something that would give people inspiration to take their power back."
