Ani DiFranco is fascinating in that she is one of the very few people in the music industry who does, literally, whatever the hell she wants-- and that unlike a lot of the others, she gets away with it. This extends beyond not letting others overtly control her, extends into not letting others influence her. You can pick up an Ani DiFranco album and know, know, that not one decision, musical or otherwise, on the entire album was based on a question of whether or not anyone in the entire universe other than Ani DiFranco would like the resulting product. She holds back nothing. She is, in short, free.

Two extremely, extremely important words which are important parts of DiFranco and impact her music greatly but which seem to have been left out of this node entirely are: