Legendary soul singer Patti LaBelle went off on today’s singers, thoroughly denouncing the title “diva” because the word has been polluted in modern times and it negatively associates her with today’s top talent, all of whom she claims cannot hold a note.
“That word is used so loosely that I don’t even consider myself a diva,” LaBelle, 69, told PrideSource. “I always considered myself a woman who sings her heart out and who gives 120 percent. ‘Diva’ is a word that I wouldn’t wanna call myself because it’s so loosely used. It’s not cute anymore.”
When the self-admitted brutally honest LaBelle was asked whether there’s now a negative connotation to the once-esteemed title, LaBelle didn’t hold back with her response.
“Yeah, because all these little heifers who can’t sing are called divas!” LaBelle barked, though she refused to name whom she was referring to.
“It doesn’t mean anything to me and probably to some of the other ladies who have been doing it for as long as I have: Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick,” LaBelle said. “You know, I’m speaking for me—I don’t know if they like to be called divas—but I know I wouldn’t call them divas, because it’s not in good company.”
The 2003 Grammy Hall of Fame inductee then noted that the word “diva” was once a respectable term used to describe “opera singers” and “ladies who earned it, but that was way, way back when.”
“Now you can look up to them, but you might not see what you wanna see. A hot mess!” she said of today’s so-called divas. “People who are doing it and doing it with about 40 people onstage with them to hide their pitifulness—that’s not a word, but you know what I mean.”
