Kesha is celebrating her freedom. On Friday night, the musician headlined West Hollywood Pride at OutLoud Fest and shared onstage that the concert marked her first show since becoming a free woman after settling her decade-long lawsuit with Dr. Luke last summer.
“This is my first show as a free motherfucking woman,” Kesha told the crowd before debuting a new song aptly titled “Freedom,” as she asked the crowd, “Anybody else feeling free as fuck tonight?”
Kesha packed her performance with some of her greatest hits from the early 2010s, including “Blow,” “Timber,” “Backstabber,” and “Tik Tok,” on which she replaced the song’s opening lyric to “Wake up in the morning like Fuck P Diddy” in reference to the myriad assault accusations against the music mogul. (She and Renée Rapp did the same while performing the track together at Coachella.)
Kesha closed her show by performing “Praying,” her emotional Rainbow song about her legal battle with Luke, and the queer anthem “We R Who We R,” as drag stars Morphine Love Dion and Laganja Estranga joined her onstage and a message that read “Kesha’s music makes people gay” played on screen.
“I fucking love you,” she told the crowd at the end of her show. We was wearing a leather jacket with the word “Freedom” written in jewels on the back.
The performance comes about a year after she settled her lawsuit with Dr. Luke, and months after she officially parted ways with RCA Records and Luke’s Kemosabe imprint. Back in February, she shared her excitement for the new chapter in her life as she teased new music.
“I’ll say that there is a day—although I won’t say the day—but there is a day marked on my calendar when I am free to release music,” Kesha told V Magazine. “So just know that she is out here in the woods writing and singing till four in the morning, ferociously. I am being a feral wild woman out here. So just know that.”
In March, the singer tweeted, “First day I’ve owned my voice in 19 years. Welcome.”
Last June, Luke and Kesha said they had reached a “resolution” to Luke’s defamation lawsuit, years after Kesha first filed a suit against the producer in 2014. Kesha had alleged an extended period of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and had attempted to extricate herself from her contract. Luke countersued that same year, vehemently denying her allegations and claiming that the singer had defamed him. (A judge dismissed Kesha’s claims in 2016, on the grounds that they were too old.)
In her statement at the time of the settlement, Kesha said that “only God knows what happened” on the night she claimed she was raped by the producer, adding, “As I always said, I cannot recount everything that happened.” Luke, for his part, maintained his full innocence: “I am absolutely certain that nothing happened.”
Friday night marked the first day of JJLA’s OutLoud Fest in West Hollywood. Janelle Monáe is set to headline on Saturday before performances from Kylie Minogue and Purple Disco Machine on Sunday.
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