Love Quote by Ronnie Spector

Ronnie Spector is praising Ruth Brown with the kind of admiration that only comes from having survived the same industry meat grinder. She starts with the expected tribute to a singer’s voice, then pivots fast: the real awe is reserved for what Brown did when the lights went out and the contracts came out. That move is the tell. In Spector’s world, talent is never the full story; control is.

Calling Brown’s stance “girl power” is deliberately pop-language, but it’s not the spice-girl poster version. It’s battle-tested feminism: a Black woman in R&B refusing to be treated as a disposable instrument of profit, then turning that refusal into infrastructure. The phrase “ripped her off” lands bluntly, refusing the industry’s preferred euphemisms (miscommunication, bad management, complicated accounting). Spector’s not romanticizing the past; she’s naming harm.

The subtext is also self-referential. Spector’s own career was shadowed by exploitation and coercion, so this is less a detached compliment than a coded lineage: Ruth Brown as a model for what survival can look like when it becomes advocacy. The Rhythm and Blues Foundation is the proof point that keeps this from being mere inspiration talk; it’s about mechanisms, not vibes.

In a culture that loves to celebrate female artists as icons and then forget their labor rights, Spector frames Brown’s legacy as both sound and consequence: the voice, yes, but also the fight that made it harder to steal from the next voice.