For those of us (like me) who wear the term "chronically online" like a badge of honor, PinkPantheress' world is our everything. When we close our eyes, her glossy voice and Y2K nostalgia is a comfort. With a single roller in her bangs and the purse she's never without, PinkPantheress has become our soundtrack, vision board and guide.

For this set, the once anonymous dance-pop star sheds the electronic sounds that we know her for; to our complete delight, her voice is just as glossy and her presence just as entrancing in these new arrangements. Dressed in her signature tartan (with matching tea pot), PinkPantheress' band expands her sound, swapping the glitched-out samples in "Girl Like Me" for heavier guitar riffs. She shapes the moments that we crave in songs like "Pain" and "Illegal" as softer, jazzier ones.

As she performs, she nonchalantly cycles through the instruments laid out before her: some harmonica here, a bit of cowbell there, chimes once or twice. Her comedic timing is deadpan, yet precise — a reminder of why fans obsess over her digital footprint. It's always a gift when artists reimagine their discography alongside us at the Desk. PinkPantheress dives into this challenge, yet maintains her magnetic aura, which is just another reason we still can't seem to look away.

SET LIST

• "Attracted to You"

• "Pain"

• "Break It Off"

• "Illegal"

• "Girl Like Me"

• "The aisle"

• "Passion"

• "Tonight"

MUSICIANS

• PinkPantheress: vocals, harmonica, percussion 

• Lisa Remar: keys

• Joe Lesher-Liao: DJ

• Sofia D'Angelo: guitar, background vocals

• Jaleacia "Queen Drums" Harris: drums

• Tina Chau Le: keys, guitar, background vocals

• Rani Adi: bass
  

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Dora Levite

• Director/Editor: Maia Stern

• Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell

• Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter

• Videographers: Maia Stern, Sofia Seidel, Michael Zamora, Alanté Serene

• Audio Engineer: Hannah Gluvna

• Production Assistant: Dhanika Pineda

• Photographer: Zayrha Rodriguez

• Series Editor: Lars Gotrich

• Tiny Desk Team: Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant

• Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed

• Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton

Copyright 2025, NPR

Mustafa maintains hope in dark times. For this Tiny Desk, the Sudanese Canadian artist features material from Dunya, one of the best albums of 2024, plus "Stay Alive," an earlier song of his that he says became "the thesis of everything that I believe in."

A talented poet and songwriter, Mustafa has written for stars like Justin Bieber and The Weeknd — but as you see here, his artistry shines most when he sings heart-wrenchingly beautiful songs about his community. "I was born and raised in the largest housing project in North America," he tells us. The depth of his emotions are palpable here: joy as he playfully interacts with a Sudanese choir assembled for this performance, pain as his soft voice pleads over oud, guitar and cello, and devotion as he sings about his faith. Dylan Wiggins, a producer for Dunya, helped with these Tiny Desk arrangements.

On the Desk, you'll see a variety of objects that celebrate his Sudanese heritage, but also a press vest — the kind used by journalists reporting in combat zones. In Toronto, the police would call into venues and recommend canceling Mustafa's early shows, citing "safety risks." That's when Mustafa began to contrast the white of his thawb with the bulletproof material of a press vest emblazoned with the word POET. "When I'm asking my boys to stay alive," he says, "I'm asking that, when they return from a war, they don't lose what makes them soft and they don't lose what makes them tender. And that, to me, is a radical act."

SET LIST

• "Name of God"

• "I'll Go Anywhere"

• "Stay Alive"

• "What Happened, Mohamed?"

MUSICIANS

• Mustafa: vocals

• Fletcher Milloy: guitar, background vocals

• Yunus Iyriboz: oud, guitar

• Wesley Hornpetrie: cello

• SAFA: background vocals

• Dua Kheiry: background vocals

• Nadine El Roubi: background vocals

• Batool Ibrahim: background vocals

• Bousaina Ibrahim: background vocals

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Elle Mannion

• Director/Editor: Joshua Bryant

• Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell

• Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter

• Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Maia Stern, Kara Frame

• Audio Engineer: Hannah Gluvna

• Audio Mix: Maggie Luthar

• Production Assistant: Dhanika Pineda

• Photographer: Grace Raver

• Series Editor: Lars Gotrich

• Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed

• Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson, Robin Hilton

Copyright 2025, NPR

On "9 2 5," the second single from his new album The Passionate Ones, the multi-hyphenate artist Nourished by Time is up-front about his own passions. The track is sparkling at first, its synth keys and sequenced drums sounding like a Whitney Houston song and a New Order song left in a pressure cooker to simmer together. But when Marcus Brown begins singing — his voice sounding lo-fi but tender, the way a bruise can be tender — you can feel the stinging vulnerability in every tugged-on syllable, as he weighs two forms of labor: "Working restaurants by day / Writing love songs every night / He can barely make it by." Brown has been writing love songs for many years, and while distorted in the way all of his music is — raw yet accomplished, identity-forward yet sonically elusive, wringing post-punk and synth-funk into bizarro R&B balladry — they are usually colored by the stories of people trying to make it by. Indeed, nothing has inspired the wandering style of Nourished by Time quite like work, be it the toil itself or just the condition of striving.

After stints in Los Angeles and the U.K., the 30-year-old Brown moved to New York City this year. Today he's traveled down to Baltimore, where he grew up, to meet me at R. House, a food court in the city's Remington neighborhood, not far from Johns Hopkins University. Brown slides in across the booth from me holding a beer, asserting that it takes more than moving to a new city to stoke one's creative fire. "Nothing should come from outside," he says, his hands flailing, even with one in a wrist wrap due to a nagging cyst issue. "Every choice should be an internal choice — should come with some level of internal struggle."

Remington is one of Marcus Brown's hometown stomping grounds. His brother is a pastry chef at Gertrude's, a kitchen inside the Baltimore Museum of Art; the anarchist ex he was dating while writing Erotic Probiotic 2, his 2023 breakthrough release, works in the area as well. That album, a quietly released breakup record that scanned like irradiated dance music for the end times, made more noise than anticipated: Music press marked it as one of the best of the year, and the momentum facilitated a jump to the distinguished indie label XL Recordings, raising the curtain on Nourished by Time as a serious endeavor. "I never expected it to become this big thing. I wasn't really expecting anyone to hear it, and I was kind of just writing music," Brown says. "That's partly why it's maybe a little more discombobulated, and goes a lot of different places. I think it's an amazing album, but it wasn't necessarily me at 100%."

Brown has been gearing up to reach 100% for a long time, logging hours in various short-term gigs. "I've been working since I was like 14," he says, rattling off his CV — YouthWorks, Barnes & Noble, dog walker, amateur tennis coach, attendant at Floyd's Barbershop in Ellicott City and in-store shopper at Whole Foods in Los Angeles' Koreatown, which he calls his worst job ever. Brown jokes that he was radicalized in that supermarket, forced to come to terms with how little value his time and labor held to the company: "I was really just seeing the Matrix happen in real time." It was around then that he took a more active interest in progressive politics, following his curiosity from the news live stream TYT Network to journalist Aaron Maté to the political podcast Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar. When COVID hit the U.S., he ditched LA and went back home to his parents, where he committed himself to his music.

If Erotic Probiotic 2 was an accidental introduction, The Passionate Ones is far more intentional, the personal and political statement Brown has been building toward. "My goal is to reconceptualize work with this album," he explains. "You hear 'working,' you think negative. You think of oppression; you think of being exploited. But there's also the work your job doesn't want you to do, the work that sets you free — and that's creative work." These days, creative work is his full-time job, and his move to New York was prompted by a desire to follow the muse. "It's really expensive, but there's also a really romantic aspect about living there," he says. "Everyone, regardless of the medium, has come through in some way." When he does visit home, he's a scene regular again, going out to shows at beloved indie venue Ottobar and factory turned DIY art space The Compound, or browsing instrument shops for the gear he could never afford when he lived there. "So much of my experience here was so poor," he says, "so it's nice to have a little bit of spending money."

Brown grew up in Mount Washington, after a lucky break allowed his "lower-middle class" family to move from a Hamilton row house to the historic northwest district at the edge of Baltimore County. Stark class realities were right before his eyes: His grandmother lived in Mondawmin, a 12-minute drive away but a world of difference, and he attended public school but shadowed at the private Catholic prep schools Mount Saint Joseph and Calvert Hall. "Being able to have that safety and see how these older white people are living … when there's any city problem, the city comes that day to fix it. But when I go to see my grandmother, the same homes on her street had been run down and dilapidated since I was a baby. If you're paying attention, you see the two sides of it."

A performer was born in 2009 when Michael Jackson died, and videos made the rounds of his collaborations with Guns N' Roses axe man Slash. A dazzled 15-year-old Brown followed the breadcrumbs back to Jimi Hendrix, which prompted him to pick up guitar. "Everything I was learning about the guitar experience was Black to me," he says. "I'm obsessed with Eddie Hazel, and everyone else at the cafeteria is listening to Gucci and Flocka and Boosie and, like, Dom Kennedy. Which I also liked, but they couldn't get why I was listening to AC/DC." Toward the tail end of high school, a youth renaissance led by crews like Odd Future, Pro Era, A$AP Mob and Black Hippy turned the tide in hip-hop, seemingly granting an entire generation of teenagers permission to jump to the frequency Brown was already operating on. "Guitar and music, it gave me a pass to be myself — and the same people that were making fun of me for playing guitar were asking for lessons by 12th grade." He was convinced to stay the course. "By the end of it, I realized: As long as I'm myself, I'm Black," he explains. "The only people that I want acceptance from is the Black community. But I don't want it at the expense of me trying to be something I'm not."

At 17, Brown traveled to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music. He knew he wanted to spend all his time on music but wasn't sure about the path, and going to school at least mimed the gestures of careerist ambitions. When he showed up as a freshman, the idea was to become a session guitarist on pop songs. Then his grandfather died, and grief unlocked a new challenge: "I tried to write a song about it, and it was so ass that I got obsessed with writing songs." Composition came quickly to Brown, but mostly as a "raw, intuitive" process, which set him apart from his classmates, in whom he saw a pervasive single-mindedness. "It felt like everyone's parents gave them the talk right before — like, 'You've got to make money.' "He pauses for the slightest moment. "My parents did that, too. But me even being at Berklee, they fell for my trap. Going to Berklee was just my version of not going to college.

"I'm not the biggest music theory guy," Brown admits. "I can talk about it, but when you go to a school like that, you're surrounded by the greatest musicians in the world." Music school became an opportunity to experiment, to push himself to the furthest corners and see what would happen. It's also where he met his friend and bassist Carrington Edmondson, whom he counts among the reasons for his move to NYC. "I do get a little afraid to think about what I would be doing if I didn't go there, only because of the people that I met through that experience. It was very formative." Still, there are things about learning music that go beyond instruction, toward instinct. "At Berklee, everyone assumed that musicianship carries over into songwriting," he scoffs. "It doesn't. Some of the worst songwriters I know are amazing musicians. It's a completely different muscle. Not every doctor knows how to do brain surgery."

Brown's thoughts on education are part of a larger ambivalence he holds toward institutions. He calls himself an "anti-church" guy but loves religion, noting that it ushered his mom through a tough time. Politically, he has high regard for praxis and finds theory too abstract. "A lot of people on the academic left are so well-read, but their entrance into working-class rights and race is purely theoretical. They don't have any lived experience," he says. In our conversation, he touches frequently on progressive talking points: the Overton window, corporate donations to politicians, Gaza as a rare litmus test ("If you're a true leftist, this is a no-brainer," he says). He points to Baltimore as a clear corroboration of socialist ideas in practice: "We're seeing that community projects work, less policing works, more money reinvested into the community works."

One of Brown's primary tenets is that you can't let wage work get in the way of creative work — even in a creative economy that demands a superhuman work ethic. In Los Angeles, he'd get home from his job at 11 p.m. and then work on music until 2 a.m. every day. "For me, my thing is songwriting. That was my thing for 10 years, and no one knew about it. It was my way of learning about myself, and it was an obsession. I was, I am, possessed by this hunger to create. And I think what I'm trying to say with this record is, we should focus on our personal works," he says. "It's not going to be sexy. I had to move back with my parents. I was just like, I'm gonna invest." He gave himself two years to work it out, figuring that if it didn't happen, at least he could tell himself he made something. He thanks God it did, but says he was prepared to sacrifice a lot. "I'm willing to die for it. To me, my life was for this."

Brown's singing voice has the kind of character you can't deepfake, gruff but velvety with a sheen like velour. It's the perfect pair for a production style that gathers and filters ideas learned slowly by osmosis, taking the necessary years of searching as a given. You can hear that voice locking in on a song like "Max Potential," its timbre riding the wave of crashing riffs as he howls, "If I'm gonna go insane, at least I'm loved by you." Following the breakup that defined Erotic Probiotic 2, The Passionate Ones is a rehabilitation of sorts, not-so-stealthily yearning and romantic, insistent that neither the state, mental health or even time can stand in the way of pursuing love. "What hurt the most was the things you realize about yourself in that process," Brown says of the post-separation soul-searching. "You just do more self-reflection. The Passionate Ones is less heartbreaky: I can find love again, but it doesn't have to look a certain way." That self-reflection has led him to write and sing with new purpose. "My whole life changed faster than a minute / I dreamed this life, now I'm scared to live it," he sings on "It's Time." One thing he isn't scared to do: use his new platform to say his piece. "The evidence was haunting / The world kept revolving / If you can bomb Palestine / You can bomb Mondawmin," he raps on "Baby Baby," literally bringing the issue home.

Musically, he calls the new album his crack at the alchemy of early Kanye West albums like The College Dropout or Late Registration: "The soul of the album is hip-hop, even if the music might not be exactly hip-hop." The palette is as broad as ever, moving from club styles to something he's referred to as "freaked-out soul," but the music is more focused, turning what he's learned along his journey into a more robust sound honoring his favorite music: Max Martin's supercharged pop choruses, SWV's relaxed twang, Meatloaf and Nicki Minaj's shared flair for the theatrical. "I identify this album as post-R&B," Brown declares. "FKA twigs and Frank Ocean are that, too, but this is my contribution to the genre. I just think Black music is the most expansive." He bucks "genreless" as a distinction, but shrugs when others try to mark out the references he's making in his songs: "new jack swing," "Baltimore club," "indie-pop," "neo-soul." By his analysis, a different, more vibrational kind of indexing is taking place. "If I broke this down into parts, I could use them individually for different things, right?" he says. "I think that's how I see genres. I see them as feelings — what job is this getting done?"

The Nourished by Time project seems to be balancing Berklee songcraft with something more visceral at every turn. When Brown writes, he always forces himself to create A and B sections, having routinely been unsatisfied with building around a single eight-bar loop: "It doesn't feel like a song," he says. "It feels like something for the ego." Every time he makes a record, he tries to do something he's never done before. For Erotic Probiotic 2, he learned Ableton Live, the digital audio workstation. For The Passionate Ones, 40% of which was recorded in one month earlier this year thanks to an intensifying tour schedule, he taught himself how to sample in the classic rap tradition. "I was trying to make a more concise album, but I still wanted to have the avant-garde and experimental aspects to it," he says. "In this record, I really wanted to identify as the music — like, I wanted the music to have a voice, and I didn't want to talk as much." He compares songs to a Ouija board, saying they will tell you where to go. "What's more important to me than the lyrics is the feeling of them coming out of my mouth."

Still, there is plenty of intention in the writing, which conjures a search for the American Dream in the minefield of late-stage capitalism, and the quiet revolution of persisting amidst the decay of empire. "I need a girl to cause a little civil unrest," he raps on "Baby Baby." "Tryna beat the system / Manifest a vision," he sings on "9 2 5." Even at their most casual, the lyrics feel primal, which Brown says comes from a natural instinct to speak to the proletariat: "Not everyone went to school and took Marxist classes," he cautions. "Not everyone knows what 'dialectical materialism' is. When you write about things in music, you have to write about them a certain way." R&B is a music of such passion that it has long been technically maligned, but there is no better sound to furnish Brown's gut-based form of songwriting. Tweaking its intensity and melodrama to his frequency — attaching himself to tradition, as he puts it — not only keeps him anchored amid an intuitive, exploratory process, it connects him to a deeply fundamental mode of being.

More and more, people are getting the message. In February, Nourished by Time toured with two of his indie exemplars, Toro Y Moi and Panda Bear. Last month, he hit the Lollapalooza stage, and he kicks off his first headlining tour on Sept. 11 in Baltimore. Brown beams as he recalls his experience on the road — gushing about his billmates, collecting mentors, soaking up game. "I feel like I'm a rookie in the NBA," he says. "The misconception when you get signed is that you're supposed to just go crazy, make all this money, ball out. Nah." He points to Dev Hynes, Mac DeMarco and Beach House as examples of indie artists whose true breakthroughs came only after staying the course and establishing themselves across several albums, and he seems to be charting a similar trajectory for himself in his mind's eye.

With new visibility comes an aspect of this work that can only be learned by doing: maintaining your artistic identity in spite of greater and greater expectations. "Something I learned on tour is that the audience can't open up until you open up," he says. "All of this is so absurd that I'm going to be more absurd. It opens me up. I would be remiss if I wasn't myself, with all this attention." In the process, he has become a case in point for his own thesis: Work can be creative labor, and creative labor can be both a way to make a living and a way to define oneself. For years, Brown defined success largely in terms of the grind, where the only indicator of progress was whether he'd made something or not on a given day. Now, his lived experience suggests a grander, subtler version of success is closer than he ever imagined. As he sings on the album cut "Crazy People," "It took me 10 years — but I'm on time."

Copyright 2025, NPR

If the late Minneapolis techno producer Liara’s The Last Angel were an active artist’s debut album, we’d be celebrating the arrival of a bold new talent. As it is, the album still sounds celebratory—ferociously so, much of the time—even though it is, in effect, a memorial.

Liara Kaylee Tsai hadn’t been in Minnesota for very long—only a few months—when she was the victim of a shocking, brutal murder: MPR News covered the case at length here, and I delved into Liara’s bountiful life for Carbon Sound here. The Last Angel was released June 21 by the queer-focused Chicago label Banana Pudding, on the anniversary of her death.

The music—which you can hear on SoundCloud or at Bandcamp, where it is a name-your-price download— is noteworthy.

Angelia Word, a Chicago DJ who runs Banana Pudding, assembled The Last Angel over the past year. Word and Liara had been musical comrades from their first meeting in the spring of 2021, when they both lived in Iowa City. Shortly after that, they began hosting events under the moniker Femme Decks, and in November of 2022, Banana Pudding issued Actualization, Maybe, an early Liara EP. Liara came to the Twin Cities and Word moved to Chicago, expanding Banana Pudding into a party brand and booking agency, but the two stayed tight. The Last Angel is a testament not only to a talent gone too soon but also to a close creative friendship.

The seven tracks on The Last Angel were recorded over the last three years of Liara’s life, and their sources are far-flung. Assembling the album took a fair amount of detective work. “I started out by posting on my Instagram Story: ‘If you know anyone that has Liara’s tracks, let me know.’ Two people that run labels said, “Liara sent me a track that a demo to put out, and I still have it. Do you want it?’ And then a couple of the tracks are live recordings she did,” says Word.

Happily, Liara made sure to document everything. She kept very, very detailed records of exactly when all the tracks were made,” says Word. “I actually have exact dates on all the tracks; the live recordings as well. For most of it, she used Roland hardware, which she made most of her tracks with.”

Word estimates that she gathered “12 or 14” of Liara’s tracks altogether before whittling it down to the seven that appear on The Last Angel. “I struggled to decide whether or not I should release everything, or I should have it be more curated. And I did decide to have it be a more curated album,” she says. “I really wanted this album to feel really full and purposeful and intentional and not just like a blanket release of everything.”

Liara’s “hypnotic acid electro,” as Word calls it, was inextricable from her DJ performances. They were intended to be played in sets, not just showcased on their own. But track by track, this music has enormous presence. It’s a massive step up from the Actualization, Maybe EP, particularly in its arrangements.

In dance music, the word “acid” refers to the wriggling, squiggling lines generated by the knobs of a Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer and its digital progeny, which can stretch and distend a simple melodic line in oft-disorienting ways. Liara, like many acid producers, likes layering those lines to create a playfully sinister atmosphere, as on The Last Angel’s “Tesselation Matrix.”

There’s a great deal of, to use Jimmy Page’s term, light and shade in this music. Liara’s bass patterns have the insistent melodicism of vintage New Order—see the springy kineticism of the low end on “Solar Aurora’s Dance”—and even when the arrangements are busy, they’re also free-ranging.

My favorite track, “Another Time Spell,” is robot boogie as pinball game. Its handful of jitterbugging synth lines all play hopscotch together, only to pause on the one to let you catch your breath. Dance music can often be rigid—that’s what holds Actualization, Maybe back musically, in fact. Liara found a way to make it seem endlessly varied, and infused with what Word calls “her angelic power and soul.”

That enveloping sensibility is something Word saw Liara beginning to conjure in Iowa City, when they were putting on Femme Decks parties. “She talked a lot about the spiritual side of her performance,” says Word. “A huge part of her performance and production is tapping into the divine feminine. You can absolutely hear that stylistically in the music, where I think it encapsulates, sort of like the hypnotic, continuous flow of sound, where I think that that developed in a new and different way as she was transitioning and living in Iowa City. I was really impressed listening to some of those tracks and feeling like, ‘Wow, this is so much more fleshed out and put together even better than it has before.’”

In addition to the downloads, The Last Angel will also be released as a limited-edition cassette—pre-orders will be available for another few weeks. The proceeds from the tape, as well as from a GoFundMe, will go to help bring Liara’s loved ones to Minneapolis for the murder trial in September.

Correction (7/8/25): A previous version of this story featured an incorrect spelling of Angelia Word’s name. Carbon Sound regrets the error.

This story was originally published on mprnews.org.

This weekend, a Minneapolis dance festival puts improvisation center stage — not as a rehearsal technique, but as the performance itself.

One of those performers is Taylor West, who’s exploring what it means to create movement in the moment.

“I took improvisation class or classes in college and have learned about the technique of improvisation,” West said. “I’ve been in processes with choreographers where they asked dancers to improvise a little bit.”

West admits she’s still fairly new to using improvisation as the product of a process

“It’s been a very interesting learning, discovering process for myself,” she said.

West is developing a piece for the 2025 Black Dance Improvisation Festival, which is taking place Friday and Saturday in Minneapolis. She is one of several artists whose work will be featured.

The festival is organized by Leslie Parker, a Twin Cities-based dance scholar and choreographer. She says it offers artists a space to explore their connection to improvisation and its cultural meaning.

Parker says that for Black dancers, improvisation isn’t just a technique — it’s often tied to questions of identity, history and cultural legacy.

“Sometimes, artists want to know more about improvisation and more about, ‘OK, what does it mean to be a Black body in improvisation, and what is this lineage?’ And then ‘do I fit?’” Parker said. 

“This is an opportunity for that, for them to explore even more.”

She is the founder of the Leslie Parker Dance Project, which engages in research, performance, and training opportunities that explore and advance Black culture. She points out that improvisation is an art form expressed through different mediums like music, visual arts and dance. 

Taylor West, photographed on March 18, is one of the dancers whose work will be featured at the Black Dance Improvisation Festival.

“It is a way that I think about community and bridging communities around conversations, and the way that I imagine what a Pan-Black African experience could look like in the dance community, surrounding the world of Black improvisation,” she said.

While Parker studies the pedagogy of Black dance improvisation, she says the festival focuses less on technique and more on how each artist approaches the form.

“It’s not just a tool for exploration. It is the end of what it is that we’re doing, and it is a very thoughtful process,” Parker said. “It requires a degree of reflection and taking the time to understand what an individual’s process is.”

For West, that process has been a sacred one, that has led to reflections beyond dancing.

“To live as a Black person is to improvise, in every sense of the word.”

The Black Dance Improvisation Festival will be held at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.

For a few minutes on Sunday evening, the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans was teleported 1,895 miles away to the city of Compton, Calif. Kendrick Lamar, the first solo rapper to headline the NFL Super Bowl halftime show, is well known for holding up the torch of West Coast hip-hop and burning it bright for all to see.

With the biggest captive audience of his career — around 65,000 fans in the Superdome and millions more at home — Lamar's performance conjured a medley of songs mostly pulled from his recent album, GNX. As a respected lyricist, he's always been adamant about upholding the artform and sport of rap, no matter how politically incorrect or inconvenient that commitment may be.

For America's annual night of God, country and football, Lamar played into fears that he's too dangerous for the country's biggest stage with sinister pleasure, making it clear that he would not soften his contempt or his approach for the mass audience.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson opened the show dressed as a satirical Uncle Sam, who would spend the entire set leering at Lamar's every move, warning not to do anything "too loud, too reckless, too ghetto."

In response, Lamar went scorched-earth on the rival that he spent the last year burying and positioned himself as a prophet of America's messy reality.

"The revolution 'bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guys," the 37-year-old said. As dozens of dancers poured out from a shiny black Buick GNX, Lamar jumped off the stage to perform "squabble up," and then segued into his 2017 single, "HUMBLE." Dancers dressed in red, white and blue marched into a stars-and-stripes-shaped formation, with Lamar positioned as a defiant rip right down the center of the flag.

"Do you really know how to play the game?" Uncle Samuel L. scolded. "Then tighten up!"

The highly anticipated performance was already the source of some controversy before it even aired. At issue: whether or not Lamar would include his 2024 hit single, "Not Like Us" in the performance. The song, which came out of a feud with fellow star Drake, quickly became one of Lamar's signature hits, setting streaming records and winning him both the record of the year and song of the year prizes at last week's Grammy Awards. It is also at the center of an ongoing lawsuit.

In January, Drake's attorneys filed a defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group, the parent company behind both rappers' record labels, accusing the corporation of distributing and heavily promoting "Not Like Us" as a way of damaging the Toronto rhymer's reputation. The song includes lyrics accusing Drake of being a pedophile and a "colonizer" of hip-hop culture. In his lawsuit, Drake argues that the record company knows that the accusations are false but promoted them anyway.

As Lamar performed other GNX tracks like "man at the garden" and "peekaboo," he knew the moment everyone was waiting for. He hinted heavily at the controversy a few times throughout his set, smirking when the string instrumental of "Not Like Us" first blared through the superdome. "But you know they love to sue," he quipped.

But rather than playing the full song, Lamar pump faked, throwing the spotlight to R&B superstar SZA to perform her verse on "luther," their current top 10 hit from GNX, followed by the two artists' collaboration "All the Stars" off Black Panther: The Album, the soundtrack album Lamar executive produced in 2018. The sparkling, safe, uplifting track seemed to appease Uncle Samuel -- but only for a few seconds.

It turned out that the hint before those softer songs was a setup: "They tried to rig the game but you can't fake influence," Lamar snarled as he launched into a full performance of "Not Like Us." He grinned straight to camera without skipping over Drake's name or any of the lyrical allegations. Adding insult to injury, a camera pan revealed tennis champion, Compton native (and Drake's ex-girlfriend) Serena Williams crip walking to the bop. The production even cut the music for the crowd to sing the song's most notorious line: "tryin' to strike a chord and it's probably A-minor."

Joined at centerfield by his producer, DJ Mustard, Lamar closed his halftime show with "tv off," turning the song's chorus into a taunt aimed at the audience of millions: Might as well turn your TV off now – this show won't be topped.

Copyright 2025, NPR

In 2006, Atlanta hosted BET's first annual Hip Hop Awards at the famed Fox Theatre, an unofficially official announcement to the rest of the world that Atlanta all but cemented its place as the epicenter of rap. The nominees read like a list of local high school yearbook superlatives with Atlanta-based artists and producers present in each category, and those same artists accounted for more than half of the stage performances — with major label-backed hitmakers Jermaine Durpi, Jeezy, Ludacris, Lil Jon and T.I. all taking space, some of them appearing more than once. But it was the closing performance from an independent rapper and local party starter that appropriately stole the show: DJ Unk doing "Walk It Out."

For the VIP visitors in the crowd, who likely went from the plane to the hotel, maybe to the posh Lenox Mall, and then to the show, Unk's presence at the star-studded ceremony was among the most authentic showcases of the city they would get. Yes, Durpi and Luda performed the city's theme song, "Welcome To Atlanta," that night, and Jeezy brought Magic City poles and dancers on stage. But Unk called back to the city's rich dance and fashion histories and had dozens of people "walk it out" down each aisle, dressed in customized airbrushed and painted t-shirts, literally throwing the energy of Atlanta into everybody's lap.

On Friday, January 24, 2025, Unk, born Anthony Leonard Platt, passed away in his sleep from a heart attack at 43, leaving people who still have memories of that performance and the time it represented heart broken. A proud "Grady Baby" — the endearing term describing anyone born in Atlanta's largest hospital, Grady Memorial — Unk's rise to stardom started as a member of the Southern Style DJs, a collective that worked under the umbrella of respected indie record label Big Oomp Records, founded by street entrepreneur-turned-businessman Korey "Big Oomp" Roberson. Big Oomp released "Walk It Out" in 2006, and the song went Top 10 on the Hot 100 and achieved platinum status. On the strength of "Walk It Out" and the follow-up single "2 Step," Unk became the biggest star the label ever had, standing as the brief but beaming culmination of its efforts. Together they represented a hyperlocal grassroots movement that reflected Atlanta as well as anything else, even in shifting the national zeitgeist.

Inspired by the popular "Poole Palace" dance and produced by Big Oomp's in-house beatsmith DJ Montay, who also produced "2 Step" and Flo Rida's "Low," the synth-driven bounce of "Walk It Out" gave listeners a passport to the hoods and clubs of Atlanta, coming at a time when regionalism was still a thing in hip-hop. The blatantly Southern hip-hop track dropped in year when local scenes across the country were pushing distinctive styles and sounds; fans were still able to get a sniff of West Coast G-Funk with Snoop Dogg's Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, a raw feel for mid-Atlantic street life on Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, a taste of NYC hardcore through Mobb Deep's Blood Money, an earful of jazz-sampling soul from the midwest with Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor and hit of Bay Area hyphy through E-40's My Ghetto Report Card powered by the anthem "Tell Me When To Go" (ironically produced by Atlanta's own Lil Jon). Before the immediate accessibility of the internet played a part in spreading the culture wide, and flattening it in the process, "Walk It Out" was a shining example of how a song, and music video, could introduce you to a city and what the people in it actually sound like.

Unk released "Walk It Out" into a rap scene in the middle of a balancing act. Outkast was all but closing the book on their milestone career, releasing their final project, the movie soundtrack disguised as an album, Idlewild. (Another ode to the staying power of "Walk It Out": the song's 2007 remix is the last time both members of Outkast appeared together on record.) T.I. and (Young) Jeezy were taking the once-underground trap music genre mainstream, while Ludacris, an artist known for his cartoonish approach to rap, cut off his braids and went for a more serious tone to release his eventually Grammy-winning album "Release Therapy." While rappers in Atlanta were still making hits, and on the cusp of shifting the hub of the entire culture south, the actual "fun" element of the music was starting to wane. With its hypnotic bass and synths, "Walk It Out" came with repeated instructions that put everyone in a trance. Unk's tunes helped keep the party going while many were deciding they were becoming too cool to dance.

As the songs exploded locally and then nationally, the hits on Unk's debut album, Beatin Down Ya Block, resuscitated Big Oomp Records as a model for self-sustained success. Throughout the 1990s Big Oomp set a blueprint for how independent rap labels could thrive in a city known more for major label-affiliated R&B and rap artists. They broke artists on their roster by featuring them on Southern Style DJ mixtapes that were already widely popular for their meticulously-produced remixes and added bass frequencies. These efforts were further supported by the DJs spinning the records at the many nightclubs they played, instantly connecting them with the streets. Add this to Big Oomp's direct-to-consumer model established behind various brick-and-mortar record stores and flea market vendor booths and you had a company with its own ecosystem.

After enjoying some local and regional success in the late 1990s and early 2000s — with artists like Hitman Sammy Sam, Baby D, Lil C, Loko and Intoxicated — the label all but disappeared as Atlanta's rap scene kicked into overdrive post-9/11. Much of this can be blamed on many of their artists facing legal troubles or dabbling in the streets, halting their outputs and limiting their visits to the studio. But the company stayed relevant through their Oomp Camp Live TV show on UPN affiliate Channel 69 and growing their record stores that carried Hip Hop albums, mixtapes, DVDs and magazines that you couldn't find at your local Kroger or Best Buy. So even though their label side lay dormant for a spell, the infrastructure was in place to meet Unk's dance-inspired song in its moment, helping it take off during the peak of the "snap" era. Almost 20 years later, "Walk It Out" and "2 Step" are still guaranteed party starters, evoking a specific time in Atlanta. Staying prepared for the trendy marathon that is the music industry, Unk helped Big Oomp sprint to the top of the charts by staying in their lane.

Figures like Jermaine Dupri, Ludacris, T.I., Jeezy, Gucci Mane, Future, Young Thug and Lil Baby presented themselves as rap incarnations of the city's long lineage of Black mayors, acting as a conduit between the city's music and the corporate interests looking to come in and capitalize. Visible, but not always touchable. But, as a company and crew, the always-independent Big Oomp Records was more akin to the late and beloved Atlanta activist Hosea Williams, who is often credited for creating the phrase "unbought and unbossed." Able to set their own pace and trends, Unk and Big Oomp maintained an eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand connection with the community it came from.

Copyright 2025, NPR

When an artist dies, you see the totality of what they do in a way that you don’t when it’s happening. It was like that for David Bowie, for Prince, and for MF DOOM. Many fans commune with old favorites at these times. As for S. H. Fernando Jr., one of the first major journalists to tackle hip-hop as a subject, he knew he had another book to write. 

“I, like everyone else, was shocked when I heard the news on New Year’s Eve 2020, going into ’21,” Fernando recalls from his home in Baltimore. “I immediately was just enthralled by all of these DOOM tribute podcasts. That reintroduced me to DOOM—his whole life story and his whole artistry. And I was just like, ‘Wow. If anyone needs a book, it’s DOOM.’ I had just handed in a book. You’d think I want to just chill for a minute, but I just went right into it.” 

The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast, Fernando’s new bio-study of the hip-hop icon, is as close as we are likely to get to this largely secretive but alluringly prolific artist’s story in full. It coincides with a recent reissue of 1999’s Operation: Doomsday, which debuted DOOM’s new persona. (Previously, he’d been Zev Love X of early-’90s rappers KMD, who issued one album on a major label subsidiary prior to the death of Subroc, a fellow member and DOOM’s brother.) Also, Minnesota-based Rhymesayers put out a 20th anniversary reissue of the 2004 MF Doom album, Mm . . Food.  

In fact, Rhymesayers has become a key guardian of DOOM’s legacy. The label has long distributed his Metalface Records imprint, and in the book, Fernando reports that Rhymesayers cofounder, Siddiq, was the rapper’s personal manager at the time of his death. In addition to the two recent reissues, the label also offers the second KMD album, Black Bastards, which took a decade to come out the first time, in 2001; and Vaudeville Villain, the 2003 DOOM album released under the moniker Viktor Vaughn.  

“Rhymesayers is re-releasing his music, repackaging it, with new artwork and extra features, so the book came at a pretty opportune time,” says Fernando. “Now, it’s like the rediscovery process. It’s amazing—a friend of mine [from] college called me and said his 14-year-old daughter is a huge DOOM fan. Could I sign a book for her? So, his fandom is getting younger and younger too. The kids are discovering him.” 

Fernando’s book offers a lot to chew on, both historically and analytically. Take DOOM’s persona—his name came from the Fantastic Four villain Dr. Doom, with spin-offs like Viktor Vaughn riffing on Victor Von Doom, Dr. Doom’s birth name. In The Chronicles of DOOM, Fernando opens up some of the dizzying ways the series is cross-referenced in the rapper’s lyrics and approach to his own persona. 

“A lot of [rappers] use the inspiration of comics, but he was the first one to really inhabit a character,” Fernando says. “I think it’s because Doom always fancies himself, not as MC, but as a writer of fiction, you can write whatever you want. “The whole mask thing—initially it was a way for him to just evade that whole fame thing. But eventually the mask took on an identity itself, to a point where he could just give it to someone else to go on stage and perform. It’s pretty wild that Dr. Doom in the comics used to do almost exactly the same thing—use Doombots as decoys and or, if he was in trouble, send a Doombot.” 

Marvel heroes and villains are never fully bad or fully good, says Fernando. They always have some human flaws. “When you actually compare the origin story of Viktor Von Doom to Daniel Dumile’s story, there’s a lot of crossover. His father was a mathematician, into science; his mother was a nurse, kind of more spiritual. He really inhabited that character, the super-villain, down to the fact that, when he put the mask on, he was literally a different person. I’ve had [people] tell me, he’s the nicest guy—and all of a sudden, he puts the mask on, and it’s like snap—a different person.” 

Another of this book’s services is its appendix, featuring not only an album and singles discography, but a complete list of DOOM’s recorded guest appearances—weeks of listening. Or a near-complete list, anyway: “I think it’s still incomplete, unfortunately,” says Fernando, “because I keep seeing new stuff on YouTube all the time. I thought I had a pretty comprehensive list, but it grows all the time. I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went, believe me.” 

The recent Rhymesayers reissues attest to the depth of DOOM’s fan base—each accompanied by collectible gewgaws galore. For Operation: Doomsday, there’s a vinyl box set (sold out), plus anniversary versions of the vinyl, CD, and cassette versions with a black-and-white “sketch” version of the artwork. And for Mm . . Food (please note the two dots, not three—it’s an anagram), the same—deluxe box (also sold out), vinyl, CD, tape. Not to mention the Mm . . Food cereal bowl and action figure (also sold out). 

Operation: Doomsday, DOOM’s 1999 debut under that name, proved a paradigm-shifter. “DOOM, in a way, made fun of hip-hop,” Fernando says. “He made fun of how people took themselves so seriously. That was a big part of his appeal, because it’s like he finally broke down the wall. Now, all the nerds and the geeks and the misfits can come in. He stands out in the annals of hip-hop: Someone who totally went against the grain of everything, but he was still right in the cut.” 

Rhymesayers is also the third label to issue the album. Operation: Doomsday first came out on Fondle ’Em, run by NYC hip-hop radio legend Bobbito Garcia, who issued it with little advance notice. “When Bobbito dropped it, it just kind of dropped,” Fernando remembers. “It was still underground—it was still just the heads. But then it got a re-release a year later on Subverse. Fiona Bloom, who was actually one of the owners of Subverse, she also happens to be an amazing publicist, so she was able to plug in DOOM to all the right places: The Village Voice, Spin, New York Times. Once he had exposure on that level, he was on the map.”  

As Fernando details in the book, KMD was signed to a subsidiary of Elektra, which had powerhouse distribution through Warner Bros., during a period when major labels were signing up rap acts by the gross. Two years later, the Ice-T/Body Count “Cop Killer” controversy had changed things utterly. DOOM came in for a meeting about Black Bastards and an Elektra rep handed Zev Love X a $20,000 check and explained that they wouldn’t be releasing the album, with or without the cover art. 

After a decade, Black Bastards had achieved a lost-classic rep that was finally justified when Subverse issued it for real. “It was like one-two punch,” says Fernando. “You have the story of DOOM coming back after KMD—a great story. All of a sudden, DOOM’s on the map. He just ran with it. He never, never dropped the ball. He just kept going.” 

One of DOOM’s latter-day characteristics was his extensive use of vintage cartoon sound bites and music cues, particularly from the Hanna Barbera collection. The Chronicles of DOOM contains some wonderful testimony from Jason DeMarco, the Toonami producer who later hooked DOOM up doing voiceover and music work for Cartoon Network. 

“It’s amazing how much also music he’s able to squeeze from these cartoons—really dramatic music or really suspenseful riffs,” Fernando says. “He didn’t just take the vocal snippets. And he’s very intricate with these sound collages.” 

For now, Fernando has offered a definitive roadmap to a great artist whose output can still be daunting to the newcomer. The book is unauthorized, but the author got help both from the indie-label realm he knows intimately—Fernando started his own imprint, WordSound, in the late ’90s—and from some of DOOM’s intimates, including high school friends and DOOM’s younger brother, Dimbaza.  

Fernando didn’t speak with DOOM’s wife, Jasmine, though he has kept her abreast on the book and sent her the first copies. “I think they’ll probably understand that the book is actually really helping to cement DOOM’s legacy,” he says. “That’s really, to me, what it’s about.” 

For four decades now, the cinematic masterpiece Purple Rain — starring Minnesota’s finest export, Prince — has held a unique treasured place in the pantheon of film. Hitting theaters at the peak of the initial MTV phenomenon, it successfully wove a style only seen in short-form music videos into the fiber of the silver screen. Prince, playing “The Kid,” essentially plays himself — unlike any protagonist before or since as a special effect no studio could duplicate.  

The 40th anniversary of the film’s theatrical release is Saturday, July 27. Purple Rain is seen now to be just as beloved for its outstanding technical prowess as it is for the slices of ‘80s cheese baked into its crust. But while both perspectives today emit something of a warm fondness, those two trains of thought made for a much more polarizing reception upon the film’s release. In Rolling Stone’s 1984 Year in Review, Purple Rain managed to land both in the critic-voted Top 5 Best and Top 5 Worst movies list. It’s with this in mind that we look back at what critics said about the film upon release. 

Siskel & Ebert

Television’s two most trusted critics were among the most vocal champions of the film. While those close to Prince reported that he very specifically had literal nightmares of Gene Siskel tearing the film apart leading up to the film’s release, reality landed much sweeter for The Purple One. Not content with just giving the film one glowing review, the two revisited the film multiple times throughout 1984, including a special “X-ray” feature going deep on why the film worked so well. 

In Siskel’s Chicago Tribune review, he went even further saying the film had “a freshness and maturity that most Hollywood films lack.”  

Vincent Canby, The New York Times

While in 1982 Prince sang “All The Critics Love U In New York,” there was one glaring exception. Somewhere in a Manhattan cineplex sat someone who really didn’t seem to get “it.” Yes, Times movie critic Vincent Canby missed the mark quite a bit with his review. It’s one thing to not like the film. Taste is subjective and Prince isn’t necessarily for everybody. But Canby calls the film “completely without humor” and claims “the offstage stuff is utter nonsense.” Canby also makes unflattering comparisons of Prince to Liza Minelli and Kermit the Frog, both after coming out the gate by calling the film “an album cover released as a movie.” 

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Elsewhere in the Big Apple, veteran critic Pauline Kael rained down some of her most flowery prose to be critical of the film. Here, while she admits early on to being a fan of Prince’s music — even naming specific song titles — her main issue is that “the moviemakers aren’t skillful enough to use” Prince’s performance. She also, while praising Morris Day, chastises the film as a whole for coming off “commissioned” and even takes digs at the Purple Rain album, which she also was surprisingly not fond of.  

Leonard Maltin, Entertainment Tonight

“Dramatically, this film is an incredible pile of slop.” Maltin really did not like this movie, particularly citing the treatment of women “like punching bags.” While he does call the concert footage “vibrant” and “Well shot,” his take is among the most brutal.

David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor

For those unfamiliar with this particular publication’s approach to movie reviews at the time, it was as much about knowing the movie you’re getting into as it was whether it was a good movie or not. Since it’s brief, here’s the entirety — “The pop-music star Prince makes his movie debut in this bizarre drama about a rock singer with a troubled career and a miserable home life. Directed by Albert Magnoli as if he were shooting ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ for MTV. (Rated R; contains vulgar language, violence, and a nasty attitude toward women.)”

Cynthia Kirk, Variety

The hills of Hollywood embraced Prince’s film with open arms, with Cynthia Kirk’s review capturing the West Coast approach to Prince at the time. Kirk calls it “a rousing contemporary addition to the classic backstage musical genre.” I will say, as someone who has seen this film dozens of times and has written thousands of words and given hours of lectures about it over the years, Kirk points out two things I’ve never otherwise seen a critic point out. First, and this is a minor thing, but when you compare Prince’s lyrics in the film to the rest of his discography up to that point, it is “Relatively tame.” Sure there’s “Darling Nikki,” but it does make one wonder what “Nikki” would have been doing in that hotel lobby had this been Controversy or Dirty Mind-era Prince. But the biggest revelation from reading her review is that the film contains no blood. Yes, there’s violence from the slapstick to the harrowing, but not a drop of blood is seen on-screen, even in the SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT scene where his father attempts suicide. Makes one wonder if that was a deliberate choice either in a futile attempt to land a PG-13 rating or maybe in such a hyper-stylized film, blood doesn’t exist in Prince’s world.

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

Finally, the West Coast warmth proves the perfect temperature for Purple Rain as Sheila Benson raves in a way that holds up as the best description as to why fans today like the film – “Hot, jagged, garish, ‘Purple Rain’ uses an old story, works it over with a blowtorch, and succeeds beyond even its own audacious dreams.” Behold further proof that Shelias know how to back-up Prince better than anyone.

Purple Rain will be screened on Saturday, July 27, at Target Center as part of their Purple Rain 40th Anniversary Live Showcase. Visit Target Center’s website for more information.

Walking into Samambo feels like stepping into a family reunion. Everywhere you look, there are see beautiful, welcoming faces; some familiar, some are distant relatives.  At Samambo, everyone enjoys the night as a collective. No one is cordoned off in VIP sections; all are one big, happy family.

At Samambo, there’s no hierarchy; everyone’s welcome everywhere, even on stage. It’s this genuine sense of community that creates moments of everyone singing along to familiar tracks or enjoying the thrill of discovering new tunes. You can end up in dance circles with people you'd never met, yet feel like they'd been your friends for years.

Founded in Minneapolis by DJ and producer Kwey, Samambo is an event series designed to celebrate and connect the African diaspora through music. According to Kwey, the essential ingredient for a successful party is the music. However, achieving the perfect musical atmosphere requires a unique touch. The now sought-after DJ began his journey as a young music enthusiast, deeply influenced by the diverse sounds played by his mother at home. "She listened to a lot of stuff," Kwey recounted, ranging from American icons like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to various Afrobeats artists. As he developed his own musical preferences, artists and producers like Pharrell and Timbaland emerged as significant influences on his style.

Eventually, Kwey took music into his own hands, “playing mostly drums but I was always picking up random instruments.” It was at the age of 14 that he was immersed in the world of music production, living with a producer at the time who taught him the ins and outs of creating beats and melodies. “I was just a kid going to school and I had all this free time to learn and collaborate with friends.” This passion for music and desire to learn shaped much of his childhood and eventually became a career. Despite a brief stint studying biology, Kwey left college, drawn back to Minneapolis to forge a path in music—a decision that set the stage for the creation of Samambo.

Samambo was sparked after Kwey noticed a gap in the local music scene. “There were few spaces that celebrated the full spectrum of Black music or catered specifically to the Black community.” So, he organized his own event, focusing on creating a welcoming and exhilarating environment. Key elements of a successful Samambo include visual ambiance, an energetic host, respectful and engaging staff, a focus on safety, and great music. These factors create an environment that feels safe enough for guests to fully immerse themselves in the event.

The Aakan’s slang term, Samambo, suggested by Kwey's mother, signifies a communal gathering — “Back in the day, in Ghana, police officers used to go on runs and chant songs. Locals would follow and chant along with them. People took that on and brought it into other things. A celebration of unity and joy.” It reflects the ethos of the parties: a place where people from all walks of life can come together, dance, and feel a part of something larger than themselves. 

This spirit of community and celebration has resonated deeply with attendees, many of whom have shared their own experiences. Mayah Varnado, a 25-year-old Minneapolis resident and socialite and frequent Samambo goer shared, “Samambo is for the culture, if you’re looking for a space to dance, sing, and immerse yourself in the richness of the culture, Samambo is the place to be.”

That sentiment is echoed by Angel Akurienne, a 26-year-old Minneapolis resident and multi-disciplinary artist who has attended multiple Samambos stated, “I love Samambo because they’ve crafted a secure space for the diaspora in Minneapolis.The DJs get it, the community gets it. We’re not losing recipes, we’re creating new ones!” 

As you walk in, you’re met with an eclectic mix of music, a diverse crowd, and an energy that compels everyone to dance. The events are carefully curated to balance familiar tunes and new, unexpected sounds. Local DJs, like McShellen, ENL, Yhante, Sasha Bangz, and others are selected to curate a meticulous blend of crowd favorites and lesser-known tracks, aiming to introduce his audience to new music while keeping the energy high. While the DJ line-up is crucial, Kwey also carefully selects the host for each party - Jiggy, Yoni Light, Blue Bone, Obi Original, and T Buzz are just a few notable, local names who have been on the lineup. They all represent “someone who can connect with the guests and add to the energy. They know how to balance the energy in the room and pass it around through the crowd.” All of the choices that go into Samambo from visual elements to DJs, themes, and hosts play a role in fostering a space where connections are made, and memories are born.

As Samambo grows, Kwey envisions it becoming a sustainable cultural movement, one that will continue to thrive long after he steps away from the decks. He dreams of expanding Samambo beyond Minneapolis, bringing its unique vibe to a global audience and collaborating with DJs across the globe. He's keen on building a solid team to help bring this vision to life, extending an open invitation to those who resonate with the mission of Samambo to join in its evolution.

This is the story of a life, not a death, though the death of its subject forms the inescapable backdrop and ending. The killing last weekend of the Minneapolis electro DJ Liara Kaylee Tsai created a shock wave in the city’s dance scene that has rippled throughout the region. The details have been reported widely elsewhere, including the local nightly news and Minnesota Public Radio News, and some of what follows will inevitably echo that coverage.

But Liara—everyone who knew her calls her Liara—was a life force, and that’s how she deserves to be remembered. A trans woman who was embedded deeply in local dance and queer nightlife scenes, Liara’s passing occasioned her fellow Twin Cities DJs and producers to post a veritable torrent of screenshots of her encouraging DMs and “let’s collab!” notes. That she had only officially moved to Minneapolis on May 1 of this year—after years spent in Madison and Iowa City—came as a shock to this reporter: Liara had been such a routine fixture at Twin Cities parties for the past couple years it was easy to figure she just lived here.

But even as someone who’d only spoken with her maybe twice in passing, losing Liara feels like being robbed. She wasn’t simply a skilled DJ—though she was that, too—she was a DJ with an instantly legible personality on the decks, even when she wasn’t spinning her own music (which she did, frequently). Playing urgent, giddy, frequently psychedelic electro, Liara knew how to cast a spell and create a vibe. When she died, she was a week away from playing what would be her first New York City gig. She was going places. I was looking forward to more, and so was everyone else. In less than two months living here, she made an impact that leaves a crater in her absence. There was no one else like her, even if you barely knew her.

You’d have to have been unconscious to miss Liara Kaylee Tsai in a room. Even in a Twin Cities dance scene populated by people dressing in all sorts of eye-catching get-ups — fairy outfits, skintight neon bodysuits, or full-body combos of (shudder) Zubaz — Liara in a small denim getup was still a sight to behold. “She was hard to miss, with that bright red hair,” remembers her friend and fellow DJ Dana Kazuko. Liara exuded rock-star wattage—an outsized exterior that housed a deeply thoughtful person who was true-blue even with more casual acquaintances.

“I was surprised to go back and see how many messages from her were just small-talk check-ins,” says Amanda Casanova, an active local dancer who knew Liara. “When she talked to you, you could tell that she cared, and that’s huge.” When Liara died, Casanova noticed how widespread the mourning went: “On Facebook, all of my friends from different states—she touched their lives in different ways,” she says.

Originally from Wisconsin, Liara had been making music for nearly a decade. According to Olivia Anderson, a librarian in Iowa City who was romantic partners with Liara for two years and remained friends afterward, Liara was “constantly” making music.

 “She had lived in Madison, and then moved to Albany, New York for a period of time, and then back to the Midwest, to Iowa City—reestablishing herself as Liara in the same community that she had been a part of previously, plus new ones,” Anderson says. “She started DJing when she was living in Madison, pre-transition. From what I have known and heard from people who knew her at that time and experienced her music at that time, it was always really good. But something definitely changed when she came out as Liara. That is when I feel her soul really started to shine through in her music.”

More recently, Liara bore down hard on her own production skills. “She would send me tracks she would make, and I could see vast improvements in one year,” says Neil Fox, a Minneapolis DJ and promoter. “She got way better, just like from focusing for one year on making her own tracks. Her beginning stuff was OK, but by the last stuff she sent me, it was really good.”

Liara made tracks by feel rather than hard logic. “She could explain certain technical terms,” Anderson says. “But a lot of times with her own music, she was like, ‘I don’t think about it like that. I’m not necessarily thinking about how to match up certain numbers and match up certain beats. I just do what feels right to me.’”

That’s also how she DJed. “Liara didn’t plan her sets or practice her sets,” Mega Sola, a Minneapolis clubber and close friend of Liara’s, says. “Every time, she would play it for the first time. She even told me that sometimes she would be hearing a track for the first time along with her audience. And I think that really speaks to her talent as a DJ, that she could literally just choose a song and know that it’s going to fit. And every time, it did.”

“She was a very deeply spiritually connected person, so she really brought that energy when she DJ’ed a set,” says Levi Lake, who first met Liara over Instagram and later connected in person at a queer Minneapolis dance party. “She just had a sense of self-assuredness, like: ‘This is who I am, and this is the gift I bring.’ And I absolutely, 100% agree with it. When I listened to her music, I can hear so much of her—there’s the deep, intense parts, and also the fun, bouncy, playful aspects. She just poured her whole self and all of the medicine she carried into her music.”

It’s hardly unheard of for electronic-music DJs to keep their SoundCloud pages tidy, but Liara’s page was noticeably well kept. Anderson suggests that this was partly self-care. “It was a way of documenting and preserving herself,” Anderson says. “Because of aspects of her PTSD, her memory could be kind of spotty. She could connect her recordings to certain dates, those dates to certain people—it was a way of staying connected with herself, with her past.” (That PTSD was, in part, a remnant of an earlier, other life that otherwise does not concern us: Liara had been a decorated soldier.)

PTSD wasn’t all that Liara dealt with. “She struggled with major depression,” April Lee, a former partner in Iowa City, says. “She had dissociative identity disorder, and sometimes struggled with feelings related to that—sometimes very badly, like being afraid that she was crazy. She was a survivor of sexual abuse. She had survived quite a lot and she lived with a lot of trauma. Even though we’re here to celebrate the life that she gave off, and how amazing of a person she was—I basically lived with her for eight or nine months. And in day-to-day experience, it was often evident that she was struggling very badly. She did not feel capable of getting out of bed sometimes. She was also autistic and struggled with her understandings of what other people might consider normal.”

Lee continues: “I can tell you honestly that the life that she gave to other people wasn’t always as evident in private moments. But the takeaway from that for me is that I was always astounded that she was a person who had so much on her shoulders, and yet always chose to get up every day and show love. Liara was completely free of—not anger, but hostility or hatred of any kind. Unlike other human beings that you’ve met, she simply did not feel hostility towards people. She felt angry when someone hurt her in some kind of way, or was doing something wrong. But she felt that every single person was valuable, and every person deserves healing and care. She continued to choose joy and beauty and love every day. And even if she had these, you know, often pretty terrible struggles, she continued to surround herself with positivity.”

Before coming to Minneapolis, Liara had put her empathy to use, working during part of 2023 for the Trevor Project and the 988 Suicide Hotline in Iowa City. “She really thrived,” says Anderson. “It’s difficult work. And she did end up leaving just because she didn’t have the emotional capacity to continue to field calls from people who are struggling with suicidality.”

Nevertheless, Liara seemed to have found a calling. Just before re-settling in the Twin Cities, she had just joined Intellephunk—the dance-party promotion team Steven Centrific helps run—as a crisis and support coordinator. “In the time that we’ve had our event guidelines, we’ve also grown quite a bit, and so has our community,” Centrific says. “Things that were effective in 2017-18-19 have become somewhat unmanageable for me at this point. Liara came to me saying, “I want to help you,” and it really made perfect sense, given her training as a crisis and conflict counselor, to step into that point-person role. She was excited to do it and was ready to try to make a difference. It’s a tragedy and a great loss no matter how you cut it. We all miss out here.”

Liara didn’t show up for her slot at the Sunday, June 22, edition of Centrific’s party, Communion. The next day, he and Dana Kazuko had helped organize an ad hoc memorial for Liara at Loring Park

“It was extremely emotional,” says Kazuko. “Both of us had heard the news the day before. We didn’t want the community to hear it from the news, so we worked on producing a post. One thing that was important for me: Don’t just say that your friend was murdered. You say that and, ‘We have a place to go.’”

Some 50 shell-shocked local dance-scene regulars showed up—bringing water, food, and speakers, over which Liara’s music was played. “The fact that so many people came out for Liara, and she had lived here for only a short time—it really showed how much she impacted people and how much she touched people and how much she connected with people,” says Mega Sola.

“There were so many people there, just mobilized at the drop of a hat,” says Levi Lake. “A friend came up to me; we saw each other and started sobbing, and then we hugged, and they were like, ‘I’m so sorry.’ We lit candles together and poured out drinks. That was really precious, to do that with loved ones.”

There was also a gathering at Gabe’s, in Iowa City. “It was badass,” April Lee says. “The whole Iowa City trans community and tons of people who knew her danced and shared stories.” More tributes have followed. In Chicago, Kelsie Walda—a.k.a. DJ Chia Pudding—has announced she will dedicate her July 4 set at the city’s SmartBar to Liara. And closer to home, Kazuko and another Minneapolis DJ, KittenCandy, put together an hour-long set of Liara’s tracks for SoundCloud.

There will also be a tribute at Neon Noir, this Friday, July 5, at the Uptown VFW, which Liara had originally been scheduled to play. “I’m working with video producers and visual artists to create an hourlong tribute to her,” Kazuko says. “I’m mixing a set using her original music. It will be sad but also dance-y and fun because she needs to be celebrated, not just mourned.”

But mourning is inevitable. “There was so much more there,” Kazuko says. “She was a fairly prolific music producer. There was just so much more music there, so much more art.”

Liara’s greatest legacy may have been her fearless example.

“Liara did not live her life in at all a normal way,” Olivia Anderson says. “She did not want to participate in capitalism as best as she could. She had an unbelievable ability to think on her feet and pivot from difficult situations and recover from things that would normally really incapacitate a person. And it speaks a lot to certain coping mechanisms that we do develop when we experience trauma. But I do think that it also speaks to creativity, because I think that creativity is just another word for problem-solving. She always managed to keep moving forward, with a sense of joy and compassion for other people—even the people who harmed her, who didn’t have her best interests at heart. She really lived the Christian value of loving your enemies and treating everybody as fairly as we should. Because we are all just human beings, and we’re all flawed.”

April Lee concurs. “I’ve met so many people in the past week who have told me that Liara changed their lives,” she says. “Some of those people had only known her for a day; some of those people had known her for a month. But that’s something that I had independently [felt]—suddenly, after we’d only been together for three or four weeks, I already felt like she had changed my life, because of how fearless, how authentic and expressive she was, and how much she emanated real beauty, from the inside out.

“She surrounded herself with positivity all the time,” Lee concludes. “And she gave it back to people. She was constantly connecting with people. What you’re seeing now is that those connections really matter.” 

Neon Noir, featuring Dana Kazuko, SYM1, DJ Eve, and a tribute to Liara, takes place at the Uptown VFW on Friday, July 5, at 10 p.m. More info here.

It’s been just about two weeks since Drake released “The Heart Part 6,” the most recent in the series of diss tracks between him and Kendrick Lamar. In a feud whose rapid escalation is only matched by its prolific output, the rap world sees these two titans at something of a standstill. “The Heart Part 6” was released around 24 hours after Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” an infectiously danceable and indisputably devastating diss that’s quickly becoming the song of the summer. “Not Like Us” not only sits at the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, but is producer DJ Mustard’s first #1 ever, as well as only the fourth #1 released this decade to have been written by a single person.  

That last part, Drake ghostwriting allegations aside, really emphasizes how truly one-on-one rap battles tend to be. It’s where competitive sports, art and entertainment seem to collide with devoted fans cheering on their favorites while those with a sheer love of the game sit back and appreciate the entire fandango. But rap battles aren’t solely for the coastal elites in Los Angeles and Toronto. While the beef may not be as heated here, it’s just as seasoned as Minnesota’s battle rap scene has a history of potent talent. From Eyedea becoming a national champion at the turn of the millennium to the unforgettable must-see battles at the Loring Pasta Bar, there’s no shortage of ever-evolving local battle rap action. 

One of the local leagues making the most noise is No Coast Raps, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this summer and also has sister leagues in Chicago, St Louis and New England. It also boasts a championship that’s been both defended and held by some of the top rap battle talent in the world. With talented artists catering to a fanbase and targeting an audience that absolutely lives for rap battle, we figured speaking to three of their all-time greats on what *they* would do next if they were coaching Drake or Kendrick in their current feud would make for the best perspective possible. 

Here’s how the No Coast All Stars would advise Kendrick and Drake’s next steps. 

Human (the Chicago-born Current No Coast Champion) 

I would say… Drake should either leave the ball where it's at and accept the L or prove he has a bombshell bigger than some Instagram interactions. Kendrick should drop a completely unrelated album in the near future as a show of how much cleaner he came out of the exchange. 

Breakneck

Drake is in a position where he almost has to respond. With the reports about streaming numbers (Kendrick rising fast, Drake dropping) surfacing over the last couple of days I think he will feel the pressure and respond with his best track yet. Despite doing well in the battle, there is a consensus that he lost and that is going to bother him. 

 Conversely, K Dot should feel great about his position and the way the culture is viewing him at this moment. He has the most momentum he will ever have, and I believe that (instead of another diss track) this would be the time to drop new music and capitalize on the current virality of anything he does. 

The Vesh

If I were coaching Drake, I'd tell him to take a vacation and in a few months when this has died down, release a hit new song to hopefully make everyone forget how roasted you got. 

If I were coaching Kendrick, I'd advise him to drop an album or mixtape immediately to capitalize on the publicity. It might be the only chance he has in his career to get numbers even close to Drake's. 

 But otherwise, the battle is over. 

Flavor Flav's clock. Nicki Minaj's Barbie pendant. Slick Rick's crown and eyepatch. These are famous symbols of hip-hop. But perhaps the most iconic piece of them all is Ghostface Killah's eagle cuff.

The gold bracelet weighs 5 pounds and features an eagle, wings outstretched, landing on the cuff. And it's on view right now at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"I was a really big fan of Wu-Tang," said Kevin "Coach K" Lee, guest curator for the show "Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry" and co-founder and chief operating officer of Quality Control Records. "So I remember when [Ghostface] got that piece and showed it — and to see that in person today? It just blew me away."

From chains to diamonds

But the early hip-hop artists didn't start out with giant gold eagles, diamond-encrusted nameplates or Rolexes.

Instead, said music journalist and exhibition guest curator Vikki Tobak, they shopped at small community jewelry stores, usually owned by immigrants. "There weren't many diamonds, just, you know, a gold cap for your tooth, a simple nameplate, just to show success."

From there, it went to Run-DMC's thick gold ropes, pendants like the NAS QB pendant, representing the Queensbridge houses, and the diamond-studded Roc-A-Fella medallion for the record label co-founded by Jay-Z; and eventually onto playful items like A$AP Rocky's jewel-encrusted Lego figure, with fully operational arms and legs.

"Hip-hop jewelry grew up along with the music and the culture," Tobak said.

As hip-hop became more mainstream and the artists became wealthier, the jewelry became more expensive and elaborate.

Not every piece is about wealth

With so many spectacularly shiny objects, it might be easy to miss a more humble one nestled in a case: a rectangular ring with the letter "R" in the center.

It's a Juice Crew ring, loaned by Roxanne Shanté, a radio host and a pioneer of battle rap — her breakout song "Roxanne's Revenge" was recorded when she was 14 and living in Queensbridge.

"Back in the day, a person who had juice had respect and had control over their neighborhood and situations," Shanté said. "So if you saw someone with the Juice Crew ring, then you knew that was a person that you can trust. You knew that was a person you could go to with your problems. So you had to earn it. The Juice ring could never be bought. It had to be given to you."

She said people earned that ring by doing things like helping send a kid to camp or mediating a dispute.

To her, it's a symbol that hip-hop is a family.

Other pieces in the show have African iconography, like a leather pendant worn by a member of De La Soul. Curator Tobak said the exhibition purposefully connects these pieces to other anthropology sections in the museum because the story of hip-hop and jewelry is intrinsically connected to the African diaspora.

"What we choose to put on our body is such a human thing that hip-hop has just taken to the nth degree. And I think that is the bigger, like powerful story here," she said.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

At a glance, Crimes Against Ravers is pure, joyous irreverence. Notorious for their bizarre themes and intricately collaged, emoji-laden flyers, the Minneapolis DJ collective is fearless — past events include “Boss Baby’s Hard Dance Tuesday,” a “corporate pride event,” a sex doll rave (free entry if you come with a sex doll, of course), and an “RIP MrBeast” rave. (It should be noted that the YouTuber MrBeast is still alive.) On the First Avenue website, the group bills themselves as “wedding DJs” that perform at “corporate HyVee events.” 

Jokes aside, Crimes Against Ravers (CAR) is core to the Twin Cities underground rave scene. With local DJs Soupka, DJ Cumstain, Joe Cross, Metal Gear Eric, DJ Glomp, DJ Camarilla, and DIE/ASPORA among their ranks, as well as UK DJ Sam Hell, CAR is known for putting on a great show.

CAR first came about in the spring of 2022, its DJs meeting through mutual friends, then bonding over a general desire for a harder scene: “We weren’t exactly hearing what we wanted to in the scene… in my case, I wanted to hear harder, faster music,” founding member Joe Cross shared in a Zoom interview.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people that there are certain places, especially places of high caliber, where you can’t go past a certain BPM,” fellow founding DJ Soupka tacked on. 

“There are a million subgenres of techno, and we wanted to establish a sort of melting pot,” Cross continued. “I see [CAR] shows as a way for people to experience something new and refreshing. [With us], there are also less rules around what you can play.” 

A couple of sporadic house shows later, a group chat materialized. After spitballing ideas, the group settled on the name Crimes Against Ravers. “It’s got a healthy bit of snark to it, which we liked,” member DJ Cumstain said.

“It’s a crime against ravers to put a BPM limit!” Soupka joked, setting off laughter. 

To dub CAR as simply a “techno” group is an overgeneralization. Members of the collective run the gamut, playing anything from breakcore, trance, jungle, hardcore, and gabber, the last two genres characterized by their breakneck tempos, “distorted kickdrums, and roared vocals.” With sets ranging anywhere from 140 to 200 beats per minute, Crimes Against Ravers provides a hyperactive, frenetic listen. It’s an experience you can’t find anywhere else in the Twin Cities, but it’s not for the faint of heart — a CAR gig at local bar Palmer’s led to a ban. “They basically told us, ‘good luck in your future endeavors. We don't want you to play here again,’” Soupka noted.

“It was just a salty old crowd,” DJ Cumstain jumped in. “We started at 9 PM with a pretty aggro set. The bar cleared out in fifteen minutes.”

In spite of the pushback, the group has accrued a steady following, with over 1,000 Instagram followers. Now, almost two years on, the crew splits their time between house and bar gigs, with an informal residency at Mortimer’s in Uptown. On top of it all, some CAR members have played out of state on behalf of the group, and the collective has booked several larger acts, including Salt Lake City-based Plexøs and Los Angeles Gartex. 

“It’s the closest thing to the punk aesthetic that the Minneapolis dance community has,” member DJ Camarilla noted over a phone call. “What initially really drew me to [CAR] is how DIY it is. It’s just a bunch of friends organizing the shows together and sharing the revenue. There’s no pretense.”

Local DJ avas remarked, “So many DJ collectives are [...] very unwelcoming to newcomers, and it feels like [CAR] really cares. Like they care about advancing the scene instead of just some corporate, ego-advancing thing.”

The authenticity is working — CAR has been steadily resonating with younger crowds. “It’s refreshing,” DJ DIE/ASPORA said. “I’m in my late twenties, and seeing all these freshly 21 year old kids get what’s being put down is really cool. It’s not just [CAR’s] shitposting culture, but the aesthetic, the sound. It’s working so well because it’s all genuine.”

Aside from the high BPMs and Boss Baby-related antics, what particularly sets Crimes Against Ravers apart is its commitment to accessibility. Local and newer DJs are welcome to reach out, and CAR makes a point of keeping their shows affordable: “We try to keep things around five to ten dollars unless it’s a fundraiser,” DJ Cumstain said. “It’s more fun when anyone can come, especially the people who get pissed off by our themes.”

“This is a bit of a passion project for us and we're not making a lot of money off of it personally,” Soupka added. “Right now, a lot of the money we make goes towards keeping future shows going. We love CAR, and we want to keep doing this. It’s as simple as that.”

Crimes Against Ravers performed at First Avenue’s RaveQuest on Saturday, Jan.6.

The second time Reiki Michael Hall played guitar in public was when he stood on First Avenue’s mainroom stage last July. The first time was at a basement punk show a week earlier. The mainroom performance was the debut Rock Lottery, in which the venue’s staff selected 25 Twin Cities musicians, separated them up into five bands, and gave them 48 hours to write new songs together. 

“Courage, I guess, is the word for it,” First Avenue booker Dylan Hilliker says over the phone when I describe Reiki’s limited experience playing guitar in front of an audience. “He just kind of went for it. I think it's paying off for him now.” Hilliker and his colleague James Taylor hadn’t heard of Reiki when they saw his Rock Lottery submission form, but after listening to a few Spotify tracks, they decided to give him a shot. 

Reiki and I sit in Spyhouse Coffee in northeast Minneapolis as we discuss his career — from gospel choirs to punk basements; from the Minnesota Centennial Showboat to First Avenue; from Chicago to Minnesota to LA, then back to Minnesota, and a few places in-between. 

Reiki has just finished band practice at a City Sound rehearsal studio, and his arms ache from carrying amps. The punk-fueled R&B musician carries a warm and kind demeanor and surrounds his intimate stories with an air of mystery. He has lived in LA on two occasions — but the first time is too long of a story for him to tell. He visited his mother’s home country of Liberia for the first time in 2022 to assess land his grandmother owns and navigate local business and politics — but doesn’t get into the details. He is currently experimenting with a newer sound with inspiration from aggressive acts like Turnstile, Jesus Piece, Zulu, Gojira, and Black Sabbath — but doesn’t want to give too much away.

What’s clear is the role Reiki has played for most of his life: performer. He began singing solos at church at age five. Soon, other churches recruited him, and eventually he was singing national anthems at Minnesota United soccer and Minnesota Lynx basketball games. Five-year-old Reiki also started acting in commercials and films, including the internationally acclaimed short film “Ana’s Playground.” After high school, he performed in 45 plays on the Minnesota Centennial Showboat.

Reiki’s mother managed these gigs in his youth, and the two have maintained a close relationship. His name is directly inspired by reiki, a Japanese form of energy healing that she practiced during her pregnancy. When Reiki was a child, his mother played classical CDs in the car, and he mockingly imitated Andrea Bocelli’s voice. He preferred listening to rap on his own at the time. In his mid-teens Reiki developed vocal cord nodules, vocal cord bumps that cause hoarseness and can result in lifelong damage, due to voice overuse. When a doctor said he could choose surgery or voice lessons, his mother decided to sign him up for lessons at MacPhail Center for Music.

“Reiki had incredible perseverance, a rarity in a teenager,” says Thaxter Cunio, Reiki’s classical vocal coach at MacPhail. In an email regarding his experience working with the singer, Cunio states, “It always comes down to an open and receptive mind to new ideas, and Reiki definitely had that. In fact, more so than most. There was something about his openness to learning that made him a joy to teach.”

The skills Cunio taught Reiki are applicable to his current work. “He helped me to understand the breath support needed to project, which is what I'm using when I'm doing this hardcore music,” Reiki says.

Although their work focused on building a strong technique based on a classical vocal foundation, they also applied the technique to jazz and pop material, too. “When I listen to some of his music now, I can hear the big voice and wide range that we worked on so diligently,” Cunio says.

With recovered vocal cords, Reiki began writing songs and releasing original work in 2019. He shares intimate aspects of his life story: A childhood moving from suburb to suburb in Minneapolis, beginning at the age of three. His mother had moved her four children from Chicago to Minnesota to distance them from Reiki’s father and an environment of drugs, addiction, and violence. 

At age 16, he says he received a notice of his father’s death from Chicago’s child support services, including payments. The piece of paper with life-changing information left him with questions. As a child, his “why” was a hope his father would someday see him on TV and try to find him. Now, through authentic songwriting and performance, his “why” is a mission to inspire people who have similar life experiences to overcome hardship by loving themselves.

In 2021, Reiki headed to LA to network and record a not-yet-released EP. A planned three-month stay turned into a year and a half. He compares writing music — which can begin in a variety of ways; with piano notes, guitar chords, a melody, or words on paper — to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He left LA when it eventually became clear that in order to tap into pure creative expression, he’d need the safety, financial stability, and family waiting for him back in Minneapolis. 

When he returned to Minnesota in 2022, Reiki wasn’t familiar with the tight-knit circles within the Twin Cities music scene, but quickly made connections by simply showing up to gigs. “Minneapolis is such a small music community, that when you’re getting out to shows and you're meeting people, it's really easy to work your way in,” the booker says. “I think [Reiki] has a real knack for that.”

Comparing Reiki to Minneapolis noise-rock band killusonline, Hilliker notes the wide range of sounds that are angsty, but not necessarily metal. “RUN!,” a collaborative song with ROC BARBOZA, includes fuzz-tone production and frenetic stamina. The single “WATER” feels feverish as the songwriter repeatedly raps “Ain’t nothin’ clean in the water.” 

Even when he careens towards rock-infused rap, it’s with the inextinguishable spirit of swaying grooves and hints of gospel he grew up with. “He’ll play something that sounds like a Ken Carson song into something that sounds like a Frank Ocean or a Daniel Caesar type song,” Hilliker says. The contemplative ballad “chaos” opens with hypnotic guitar string finger picks, and “End of Time” swoons with serenity. 

Reiki’s angst can be felt even more viscerally live. He considers performance an exaggerated version of oneself. On stage, he plays unreleased tracks and wants to engage a crowd from start to finish, “You have to unleash and embody a level of not giving a fuck and a level of confidence in yourself to do that,” he says. “It’s not only just playing your instrument, or singing your song, or rapping your song. It's also letting go.”

“He had what I like to call the ‘it’ factor — that charisma that’s so needed on stage, but with Reiki, this was accompanied by a pure and authentic likability,” Cunio says, reflecting on how he identified the artist’s potential. 

Reiki says he has high ambitions and wants to play “arenas only” in the future. Far-reaching words of self-assurance — inspired by his belief in God and the workings of the universe — are wrapped in humble confidence. He attributes his conviction to the joys that he believes he owes to his inner child. On days he lacks motivation, he thinks, “You gotta keep going for him — the kid that wanted his father around, the kid that wanted to be understood, the kid who had so much energy at the school and [people who] didn't know how to handle that energy.”

Despite envisioning extensive long-term goals, at this moment, he’s honored to play First Avenue’s upcoming Best New Bands show and deeply appreciates the local connections that have allowed him to do so. When he steps onto the mainroom stage again, Reiki will be joined by guitarist Jake Beitel (Prize Horse), bassist Henry Breen (WHY NOT), and drummer Jon Lindquist (Raffaella, Brunette, Denim Matriarch), musicians whose live performance styles he respects as much as their technical skills. 

As the conversation comes to a close, Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” comes over the coffee shop’s speakers. As Crow sings the cathartic anthem about embracing one's own path to contentment, Reiki reflects on trusting himself while carrying a guitar onto the mainroom stage last July. 

He concludes the risk was worth it. “When you're stepping into a season of life, or you're trying to step into a new version or a new level of yourself, it never feels solid,” he says. “You never feel like all 10 of your toes are down, but you can embody that and have courage in the midst of that fear.”

Reiki has upcoming performances at First Avenue on Friday, Jan. 12 and at 7th St. Entry on Sunday, Feb. 11.

In some circles, “212” by Azealia Banks could be classified as a religious text. With a few simple lines, a crowd thrashes, a sweaty room keys up to one hundred: “What you gon’ do when I appear?/W-W-when I premiere?/Bitch the end of your lives are near!”

The cultish fervor is well justified. A nimble blend of hip hop and house, “212” is an indelibly catchy celebration of both queerness and Banks’ native New York. Its 2011 release hit the culture like a lightning strike, and in turn introduced the world to Azealia Banks.

“212” later made its way into Banks’ first and only studio album, Broke with Expensive Taste (2014). This November marked nine years since the release of the LP. Almost a decade later, Broke with Expensive Taste is still fresh and fascinating. Loose and maximalist, the record is held together solely by bravado, genres and storylines bending to Banks’ will. Electroclash cut “Heavy Metal and Reflective” makes Blade Runner references amid bracing synths. Album opener “Idle Delilah,” which reportedly cribbed its tropical beat from a free iTunes download, chronicles the tale of a plantation owner's daughter killed by her father’s slaves. UK garage beats melt into steel drums. ‘90s trance gives way to glossy house. 

“Looks and such, seductive strut,” Banks raps on “Desperado.” “I be Aquafizzy or that Passion Punch.” The rapper’s penchant for consonant-heavy, internal rhyme makes for an entertaining listen, with couplets meant to be spat or shouted.

“Gimme a Chance” is a particular standout, sampling a New York indie staple and cushioning it with horns and DJ scratches. “Gimme a chance, I will have to make you dance,” the hook blares. It’s a thesis for the album itself, an atmospheric and ballroom-ready tour through Banks’ psyche. In a stroke of genius, Banks dovetails the whole affair with a bachata-influenced outro, sung entirely in Spanish. 

I say all this while ignoring the elephant in the room — Banks is mired in controversy, to the point where her internet spats have long eclipsed her music. Once on the brink of stardom, her career quickly torpedoed after BWET, largely due to her many, many celebrity feuds (the rapper has come to blows with everyone from Elon Musk to the entire nation of Ireland). Banks also gets more than well warranted hate, facing extremely valid (and recurring) accusations of transphobia, homophobia, and racism. 

Concessions can be made. Banks has faced her own series of woefully bad breaks, from an abusive upbringing to struggles with bipolar disorder. In a 2016 Facebook post, Banks shared, “When you’ve been trying to engage the public with music and share with via music them [sic] your personal struggles with mental illness but they just refuse to pay attention. Instead they joke and prod at you and say you need a doctor yet have no idea about the type of uncontrollable chaos that goes on inside your head.”

Despite its joyous sound, Broke with Expensive Taste also came about in dismal fits and starts. After famed producer Diplo discovered Banks’ MySpace, she was, seemingly, on the precipice of greatness: Legends Nas and Q-Tip gave her their ringing endorsements. Kanye West at one point clamored to sign her. The New York Times hailed Banks as the “next Nicki Minaj.”

In a flash, Banks’ luck took a sharp downturn. Her first label, XL Recordings, signed her into a paltry $5k development deal, then proceeded to only send other artists’ rejected beats her way. Banks’ demos were met with confusion and disapproval, execs concerned that Banks’ work lacked commercial appeal. Calls and emails to the label went unanswered. 

“I remember [XL] signing Odd Future around the same time and being very, very jealous,” Banks shared in a recent interview. “They were being mentored and I was left by the wayside.” 

After hearing early cuts of “212,” XL finally dropped Banks in 2011. (In retrospect, this was a cosmically bad decision. Since then, Rolling Stone has named the track one of the best songs of all time.)

Her next deal, jointly made with Interscope and Polydor Records, was more of the same. It came to a head when Banks publicly begged out of her contract. “I’m really in hell here,” she tweeted. “I’m tired of having to consult a group of old white guys about my Black girl craft. They don’t even know what they’re listening for or to.”  

After wrestling her work away from her former label, Banks signed to Prospect Park, finally releasing Broke with Expensive Taste in late 2014. After years of underpaid, undervalued work, she had issued a record on her own terms, to not an insignificant amount of praise — Pitchfork dubbed Banks a “true rapper-singer double threat.” Spin deemed the LP “a project dripping in confidence, class, brilliance, and personality.”

It was a victory short-lived. In the years since, Diplo has faced multiple allegations of sexual abuse (including from Banks herself). In 2020, Banks’ former manager and Prospect Park head Jeff Kwatinetz sued her for extortion, to which Banks swiftly countersued for “breach of contract, fraud and deceit, claiming [Kwatinetz] groomed her.” 

In the midst of this gruesome legal battle, Banks pleaded for fans to stop streaming the album: “Jeff Kwatinetz stole all the money and sent a $15k check for an album that has been streamed over 200m times. The pain I feel right now is so deep. I lost ‘212.’ I worked so hard on that record. But every stream goes into his pocket.” 

This is true: Banks and her producers have reportedly not received any royalties for BWET since 2020. In short, no one was paid. No one won. The lawsuits are still ongoing. In an effort to reclaim her work, Banks recently announced plans to re-record the album, but no further information has been disclosed. 

It all gives Banks’ belligerence a tad more context. Many of Banks’ tiffs stem from artists “she fell out with at some point during their collaborative process,” including Pharrell, Disclosure, Lady Gaga, TI, and last but not least, Kanye West. (My personal favorite Banks quote eviscerates the latter: “In the future, when you’re walking down Times Square and you see Kanye West drinking [a] flat Sprite out of a McDonald’s cup out of the garbage can, you can bring it all back to this moment.”)

What also often gets lost in the muck is Banks’ sheer youth. At only 17, Banks had signed a major record deal, dropping out of high school to do so. Most of Broke with Expensive Taste was written from ages 19 to 22. While most people her age attended college, Banks was grappling with grisly label politics and music industry bias.

In early interviews, Banks initially peddled the LP as an ode to adolescence, to growing up broke in New York: “[While making this record,] I was raving a lot and wasting time at parties… you’re running around the city with your MetroCard trying to get free weed and free booze and stopping at your mom’s to eat. That’s that ratchet-ass teenage shit… Shit was grimy but those were like the best times of your life.” 

When laid bare, Broke with Expensive Taste still stands as glossy, dizzying work, brimming with promise. Like all great music, it makes you feel. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Banks herself put it best: “Every time I hear ‘212,’ it riles me up… I feel like my wings are going to break out of my shirt. I’m ready to fight; I’m ready to fuck; I’m ready to run; I’m ready to drink. Let’s go.”

I write to you first and foremost as a fangirl. I was so excited to finally be able to talk with one of my favorite local musicians, k3ko. Keah Washington makes “k3ko-type music,” as she puts it, blending R&B, pop, hyperpop, and Jersey Club influences. With only around a year of releasing music so far, she has already made some of my favorite songs. When I sat down with her for some coffee at Minneapolis’ beloved Hard Times Cafe, it was like meeting up with an old friend. She carries the same expressive and comforting energy in person that can be found in her music. 

Born a Singer

Born and raised in Minneapolis, k3ko has always felt connected to music. Since she was little, she has been singing. “I remember singing was just something I knew I could do. Adults around me would be crying and being weird, making sure I knew that I could sing. They were always wanting me to perform at open mics and things like that,” says k3ko.

Her long-time friend Ashley Franklin shares a memory of k3ko singing at her high school graduation, “That was the first time I really heard her sing, she had everyone in the audience crying, I was crying,” says Franklin. “I wasn’t just hopping on a wave, I’m a real singer,” explained k3ko. 

k3ko started making and releasing original music in May of 2022. In just over a year, she has created a discography that captures what some pop stars spend their whole lives trying to achieve. In this short time she has collaborated with many other artists including Almighty D on her song “Alone,” and other local artists such as seventhirtyatmorning and 4KUltra on songs “with u” and “Blush”. 

The Process

“I’ve always been a singer, but I never really thought about writing when I was younger,” says k3ko. “I started by writing songs in my Notes app, but when I had the music down it wasn’t encouraging. I couldn’t see the finished piece with just the lyrics, so I didn't care about the songs. I’ve been in studios with engineers, but they didn’t really see my vision. I felt like I wasn’t doing as much as I could. It was boring.”

When she started making music on her own with the app BandLab, it was a real turning point in her process. “I was able to do a lot with the background and layering in my music. I stopped writing my lyrics beforehand, everything became a lot easier. It became a lot easier to have patience with myself and just go with the flow,” she says. “It’s kind of like a painting, you have to keep mixing your colors, putting on layers, redoing some parts, and you might have to draw over that part again or whatever. But eventually, it comes together. I think of music and visual art as very similar in that way.” 

Her first memory of making her own music was an R&B song called “What You Been On?” Laying out lyrics and verses took “a long time.” She estimates it was about a week of working on that song every day for a couple of hours. “I don’t know what happened, I was listening to it on repeat every single day, over and over. I was obsessed,” says k3ko. “I’ve heard artists say they can’t listen to their own music, [but] I love listening to my own music. That was the first time I felt like I was hearing my song from an outside perspective. I just felt like what I was making was meaningful, I felt like it was all coming to life. I knew I couldn’t just make this song and never make music again, that’s when I really knew I could do it for real.”

Since then, k3ko has become very efficient in her process. She describes the process of making the standout track “Blush.” “[Collaborator and friend Matthew Mikell of 4KUltra] sent me a beat. I remember thinking the name ‘Blush’ was really clever. I sent him back my verse right away, maybe within a couple of hours. I was just really excited and motivated,” she says. 

“She’s just a very easy-going person. She makes the process really fun. She’s one of the most refreshing and inspiring people to work with for that reason, it’s not about the release for her, it’s about the fun of it all,” says Mikell. 

k3ko has her own genre that she calls “expression.” “I feel like I’m a very expressive person, I’m very verbal in my emotions. I feel like we’re losing that in music, especially in ‘fun’ music,” she says. “If you want to listen to emotional music, you’d have to listen to a sad song. I said ‘No, I’m about to bring love songs back to pop and Jersey Club.’ I sing about deep emotions on a fun beat. I’m just reminding people that it’s cool to embrace your own expression, reminding people that people still feel like this, people still think like this, and it’s OK.”

Being friends with k3ko 

“She’s just very open to working with people, she’s a people person,” says Franklin. All the praise k3ko’s friends gave to her came through during my interactions with her. She welcomed me with hugs at her most recent show, a performance at Seward Cafe on Oct. 13, and gave the crowd such positive energy, smiling through her shades on stage. It is clear that music is not only a way to showcase her talent, but to connect with her friends and community members. 

At shows, she brings her friends on stage, or they’re right next to the stage dancing, and taking photos and videos. She is surrounded by a supportive group of loving friends, and she loves to support her friends just as much. “I think everyone could benefit from some advice from Keah,” says Franklin. “It’s so refreshing to be around her. She brings a relaxed energy to the space. She made things a little less serious in a scene that can be unnecessarily intense sometimes,” says Mikell. “She’s so free-spirited and spontaneous. We could just sit in a room together and have fun,” adds another close friend, Veronica Gilbert.

What inspires k3ko

“Inspiration is spontaneous, I just get the vibe. With my friends, we could be kicking it right now and if I feel like I’m gonna make a song, I’ll make a song,” says k3ko. She credits her friends as big inspirations for her music, gushing about their shared creativity, and the love and support she receives from them.  

Her friends can attest to this: “There’s never a time where she’s planning a song, it’s always spur of the moment. She used to be over at my tiny studio apartment for weeks at a time and we’d be hanging out and she’d just randomly start making a song,” shares Gilbert.

“I broke my ankle last year and I had to change my ice pack every 30 minutes,” recalls Franklin. “She was at my place in the bathroom recording a song, and every 30 minutes on the dot she would pause and get an ice pack for me. She is really dedicated to everything in her life, whether that be her relationships or her music.”

k3ko describes music and the rest of her life as intertwined, not separate. She spends so much time being creative with her friends that she created a whole EP in the company of good friends Franklin and Gilbert. She recorded the songs “Lights” and others from her EP Shore House around them. Her friends described helping her name the EP, and k3ko even dropped it on Gilbert’s birthday. 

Her friends’ creativity inspires her music as well, “I really like being around my friends, we’ll randomly start cutting up clothes, or making jewelry, or drawing together,” she says.

“We love to sit around and draw for hours and ask each other advice on what color we should use and stuff like that,” Franklin says.

What music does she listen to to get inspired? “Justin Bieber for sure, I used to sing his songs and basically try to mimic him. I feel like I learned to sing from him,” expresses k3ko. “Juice Wrld! You need to include him!... skaiwater, especially his Jersey Club mixes. He kinda inspired me to play a little more with my beats. He was the first person that was singing on rage beats and singing on harder beats.”

“My favorite song to sing is ‘Thinking About You’ by Frank Ocean,” she adds. “I feel like if you’re a singer and you didn’t have a phase of that then you’re not a singer. I love to sing Justin Bieber, anything off of My World 2.0. I love Rihanna, my mom loved that. When I was young my mom would be obsessed with me singing and she’d be like, ‘Sing Alicia Keys!’ and stuff like that. Sometimes I’ll hear music and it’ll motivate me to want to make a song, but mostly it comes from just hearing beats, especially Jersey Club beats. That’s where I get the most ideas.”

Friendship and community are very important to k3ko. She has a deep passion for music and her personality effortlessly shines through her music. She brings so much light to a space and there is nothing more fun than dancing to her music. After seeing her perform at shows with multiple friends on stage hyping her up, it is obvious how beloved she is by the community and how bright her future is.

“I can develop and grow, I can be better. I know how to sing, it’s not that, I just want to do more,” she says. “I breathe music. Every word, every note, every run, every harmony, everything's intentional and everything is put there to make you feel like something.”

Black Kray, along with his long list of aliases, is a prolific rapper, producer, filmmaker, and founding member of the collective Goth Money Records. He is the master behind many of my favorite songs and the influence behind many of the trends in the underground rap scene. He is most well known as Black Kray but has explored many other pseudonyms, each with unique characteristics and style. I have scoured the internet to trace Black Kray’s journey through the underground, leading to where he is today.  

How It All Started  

Black Kray, born Timothy O'Neal on February 23, 1994, is from Richmond, Virginia, a place he refers to as the “Durt Road.” He dropped his first song on MySpace when he was in the 7th grade, and has been making music ever since. Goth Money members met over the internet in 2012, and Kray has since moved to LA to collaborate with them in person. 

He has over 41 solo EPs, mixtapes, and albums combined solely under ‘Black Kray’, excluding all of the other side projects and collaborations. You could say he’s using the Lil B Method, with the sheer volume of his work comparable to the other underground legend, Lil B. Through his body of work, he has explored many different genres, themes, and aesthetics and with that, alter egos. 

From Black Kreayshawn to Black Kray

Kray’s evolution has been completely natural, you can see him experimenting and finding himself through his music. His progression as an artist can be seen through each name change. It started in 2011 with his era as The Black Kreayshawn. 

The beginning of The Black Kreayshawn era can be traced back to his YouTube presence. You get a glimpse into his world, with the various skate clips, short films, music videos, and song uploads he posted to his channel. His upload of Kreayshawn’s song “I Just Wanna Be Your Friend” has amassed over 1 million views. During this time, Kray had a short-lived time as a part of Raider Klan, with members like SpaceGhostPurrp, Xavier Wulf, and Denzel Curry. He left in 2012 to pursue his group which was at the time known as Terrorist Posse, and would become Goth Money.  

By the end of 2012, Kray was an icon of the SoundCloud rap scene and a recurring character in underground rap folklore. He was creating a new sound, mixing witch house, trap, cloud rap, and horrorcore. It was like a goth Cash Money, who Kray himself says was an inspiration.

Goth Money Records 

Kray founded Goth Money Records in 2013 with the original roster consisting of himself, Marcy Mane, Kane Grocerys, Luckaleannn, Karmah, and Hunned Mill. Following his move from Virginia to LA and the birth of Goth Money, his music started to gain traction. 

The Beginning 

His music video for his song “Depre$$ed Ocean” was his own “Ginseng Strip” music video, complete with the bucket hat and all. Kray showed us his world; metal tee shirts, silk scarves, basketball jerseys, gold teeth, piercings, nature footage, and shutter effects. The unique backdrops for the video were referred to as Flexico by Marcy Mane. By this time, he was going by Black Kray pretty consistently.  

Shortly after, Kray released Ice Cream and Mac 10’s, his first full release under Goth Money Records.  Songs like “Texico Trappin” and “West Haux Stripclub”, the release showcased Kray’s style of glitzy, cloudy, and nonchalant trap music. This album is seen as his quintessential release. It solidified his place in the scene and laid the groundwork for many rappers to come. Rappers like Cartier God, Surf Gang, and even Playboi Carti. Ice Cream and Mac 10’s was where the Goth Money swag was established, and listeners were introduced to the world of “positive thuggin”.

After the release of Ice Cream and Mac 10’s many coined Kray as “Chief Keef meets Lil B” which I think is an accurate description. Though Kray is more than just the child of two existing, legendary rappers, he was paving the way for something new.

‘lilwitchhouseshawdy’

Kray’s most experimental and groundbreaking period was his witch house era, during which he went by lilwitchhouseshawdy. Witch house is a genre known for its trap-influenced beats, ethereal vocals, and goth or witch aesthetics. Kray was creating something completely new, he was the original witch house rapper.

He was ethereal, goth, darker, and cloudier than ever during this era. One of my favorite projects that shows the breadth of Black Kray’s talent is Back To The Witchhouse which is also where he coined his name ‘lilwitchhouseshawdy’. Though, he also coined a few of his other names on this album with songs titled “black kre$yshawn” and “gold mouf prince$”. He also released “water colour my tears”  as the final track on the album, tying together his style of witch house and ambient trap music. 

Kray was a big fan of the witch house genre himself, he even cites three big witch-house artists as his main influences in a 2015 interview, talking about Salem, Crim3s, and White Ring. 

Meeting Drain Gang

By 2014, Kray had met up with Drain Gang, and he was releasing songs with Yung Lean and Bladee such as “Famous,” “7 Roses,” and “Friday Nite” which are all now considered classics of the time. He released his album “Goth Luv” before embarking on an international tour with SadBoys/Drain Gang. Kray has continued to collaborate with Drain Gang and could even be considered an honorary member, but Kray has elevated his sound as well. 

He dropped his classic song “Stevie J and Joseline” which was not only the reason I started watching Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta, but a huge stepping stone in his career. The video is now approaching half a million views. The song is a great example of Kray’s themes in his music. The references and aesthetics are never forced, his music is nonchalant. A song like this that references a reality TV couple truly makes you feel like you’re hanging out and watching TV with him. During this time he also started to go by Persian Cellphone Prince. 

He also continued his other artistic ventures during this time, such as filmmaking. With the release of his two-part short film “Hood Doves,” he features witch house legend Salem’s song “Mine Mine” and lives up to his name lilwitchouseshawdy. 

Sickboyrari Debut

After collaborations with Drain Gang, Kray was on his way up. He spent time in Atlanta with artists like Lil Yachty and Metro Boomin. Barron Machat, who helped launch the careers of Yung Lean and Grimes, had Kray as his next project. In tragic circumstances, Machat passed and Yung Lean and Drain Gang members took a break from music. Kray transitioned to more solo work during this time. 

At this time, he started to go by Sickboyrari, he explains the name choice as partly because he is ‘sick’ and partly because he ‘stays in his lane like a rari’. He released Shitty Sickboy, which leaned even more into the horrorcore sound. With songs like “Elm St Horror Squad” and “Baby Cash Out Yount” he stayed true to his goth persona.

Kray aka Sickboyrari dropped three more albums and by the end of 2017, he was considered an underground king. With his song “Tearful” featured on World Star Hip Hop, he was on track to perform internationally alongside his girlfriend and collaborator Bootychaaain. 

The Birth of Tread 

Tread was a term coined by Bootychaaain to describe the high BPM, hard-hitting beats of Working On Dying production, and producers such as F1lthy and Kray himself. ‘Tread’ is characterized by distinctive 808 patterns, often off-beat hi-hats and trap triplets with icy synths and lethargic rapping. Kray could be called the ‘King of Tread’. His tape as Sickboyrari, Shitty Sickboy, illustrates the realization of this genre. 

Kray’s Impact

Kray is inventive, continuously experimental, and original. He has paved the way for rappers to come with his fearless experimentation and innovation. Through all his different aliases and projects, we can see his experimentation in real time and get a glimpse into his world. He is the definition of an underground king, your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper, and an iconic figure in rap music. 

Everything from the Renaissance World Tour to Barbenheimer points to one thing: 2023 is the year to show up and show out. Fueled by post-COVID delirium, we’ve flocked to stadiums and theaters alike in our finest, glitteriest attire, and the Walker Art Museum’s Avant Garden may just be the perfect next stop. 

The museum’s annual party for the ages serves as both a fundraiser as well as a Minnesotan take on the Met Gala. Decked out in everything from cowboy hats to pearls, visitors come in droves to enjoy a night of drinking, dining, and dancing. Aside from enjoying some reliably great live music (previous Avant Garden performers include Questlove and Dessa), event goers can also bid on select art.

“It’s the party of the year,” outgoing Walker board president Seena Hodges shared over a phone call. “It’s a celebration of summer moving into fall, and it’s this last moment of unbridled joy before we hunker down for the winter. You get to be your full self and turn out. It’s a really good time, for a really good cause.” 

If supporting the Walker’s educational and cultural programming isn’t enough of a draw, this year’s festivities boast a particularly impressive lineup. Alongside local DJs Tricky Miki and Dub Minus, lauded indie singer-songwriter Vagabon will perform a set at this year’s afterparty.

“To me, it’s important from a curatorial perspective when it comes to picking live performers,” Hodges went on. “It’s crucial to bring people of color into these spaces and give them the opportunity to be in a museum setting. Plus they play the music that we all know and love. [Avant Garden] has hosted artists like MC Light, Biz Markie, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. We just want people that make you want to dance and, you know, not afraid to sweat your hair out.”

Hodges serves as a member of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums (BTA), and notes that Avant Garden wasn’t always this accessible: “When I joined the Walker’s board of directors in 2016, I remember hearing the price of [Avant Garden] tickets and bursting out laughing.” 

In the years since a flurry of changes has followed: Aside from booking diverse musical talent, there is a yearly initiative to set aside Avant Garden tickets specifically for BIPOC artists. In addition, the art being auctioned off is now set at affordable price points.

“It’s our responsibility to broaden the tent at every turn,” Hodges continued. “Every year we invite artists who may not have a relationship with the Walker to celebrate with us. Now the event really feels like a microcosm of the Twin Cities — people forget that we have the largest Somali and Hmong populations outside of their homelands here. Minneapolis really is a diverse place, and you can see that diversity at [Avant Garden].” 

Avant Garden takes place this Saturday, September 23, at the Walker Art Center. The cocktail reception is at 5 and the after-party, including performances from Vagabon, Tricky Miki, and Dub Minus, starts at 8:30.

On a sticky July night, more than a hundred people filed into a backyard in St. Paul. Armed with foldout chairs and coolers, they crowded behind an old house, laying out blankets and cramming onto splintery picnic benches. 

As the sun lowered, the gathering, now restless, had stretched out into the neighboring yard. Behind a set of sliding glass doors, you could catch glimpses of just who they were waiting for — local singer-songwriter Mayyadda, decked out in a fluttering green dress and intricate white braids. The night, hosted at the Grand Oak Opry, commemorated the release of her latest album, the entirely acoustic Try&Remember.

Mayyadda emerged to deafening applause.

“Don’t be a parasite,” she chided the crowd. “Don’t do the Minnesotan thing and wait politely to clap. If you’re feeling a run or lick, don’t be afraid to clap. And do not clap on the one and three.” Laughter rippled through the audience.

“In some ways, my music career is an effort to stave off midlife crisis,” Mayyadda joked during our interview. “I just didn’t want to wake up one day at 50 and regret never pursuing this.”

Even over the phone, Mayyadda is humble and charismatic. It’s a feat, considering her status as somewhat of an internet sensation, nearing 200,000 TikTok followers and over 200,000 Spotify monthly listeners. The fame is by no means unwarranted: Mayyadda has long honed her craft, being a self-taught musician, producer, and audio engineer. Her firm blend of R&B, pop, and traditional singer-songwriter fare has accrued a not-insignificant audience. 

“I always tell people, the only thing I’ve been doing longer than playing piano is breathing,” Mayyadda remarked. Aside from piano lessons from age two, Mayyadda taught herself guitar at 14, all the while singing in choirs, theater, and acapella groups. 

A teen obsession with the Jonas Brothers sparked an initial interest in songwriting, something she later picked back up during her undergrad at Duke: “I don’t know what switch flipped, but by college I had enough life experience that I finally had stuff to write about. It was just me and a guitar in my dorm room, all on Voice Memos.”

At 21, Mayyadda took the plunge and chose to pursue music professionally, releasing Blue, her debut EP, on New Year’s 2016. Written the summer after her college graduation, Blue is a rootsy, DIY EP. Cuts “Rainmaker” and “Blue” are lo-fi and bittersweet, the former a florid mediation on family and time: “Blue minutes ticking time bombs / Bleeding tears and grins / Blue faces whipping past as / The old projector spins.”

Mayyadda is a little more scathing: “I go back and forth all the time on whether I should take [Blue] off the internet … It sounds crazy. I recorded it in my cousin’s bathroom, and I had vocal nodes.” 

The seven years since brought forth four albums and a holiday EP, plus gigs everywhere from Milwaukee’s 2023 Summerfest to playing the Dakota twice. Mayyadda’s work straddles the lines between pop, R&B, and traditional singer-songwriter fare, and each album has more than a few standouts — though tracks “RIP Captain Save-A-Heaux” and “WonderBread'' are plenty popular on TikTok, deep cuts like “Mississippi” showcase an artist with a knack for wordplay, and a profound understanding of harmony.

“I’ve learned a lot working with her,” friend and collaborator Sid Gopinath shared in a phone call. Gopinath produced Mayyadda’s 2022 EP, Holiday Joint. “I would be like, I think the song is done, and she’d say, ‘One second.’ Then she’d send me 40 harmony tracks. There would be doubles and triples of parts just to add textures and layers. She can build an entire soundscape out of vocals in a way few artists are able to … She has such a soulful voice, and such musicality across genres.”

Though Mayyadda initially dubbed her style of music “BlackGirlMagic,” she wavers on the term now: “Genre designations don’t feel super helpful to me. Depending on the day you catch me or depending on the performance, I could sound completely different.” Given Mayyadda’s myriad of influences, the statement rings true. Mayyadda draws from Paramore, Brandy, Ingrid Michaelson, and Miguel — upon my remark that her music reminds me a lot of the latter, Mayyadda let out a long shriek of excitement.

She went on, “People don’t often realize that a lot of what we understand as American music comes from Black people. The girls made rock and roll, the blues, gospel. Whatever I’m making, there’s a touch of so many genres rooted in Black music. That’s part of the magic of Black people, our ability to create and adapt sounds.”

The night of Try&Remember’s acoustic release had a strange alchemy to it, and I struggled to piece it together. A ceremonial hush had fallen over the crowd, and the backyard lights were golden and low. Mayyadda commanded the quiet, deftly leading sing-alongs and weaving in confessionals. 

“When Mayyadda performs live, she has this very controlled, disciplined expression,” friend and multidisciplinary artist Vie Boheme revealed. “She’ll get lost in the music and take you on a journey, and then she hops out after every song as herself, in such a personable way.” 

The release also happened to fall on both Mayyadda and her bassist’s birthday. (They turned 30 and 40 respectively.) “I’ve been feeling really existential crisis-y about 30,” Mayyadda confided in our earlier interview. “But this new album feels like a good moment. I’m still surprised by the way [the original] Try&Remember was received. Even though it came out two years ago, it keeps resonating with people. I also find that no matter how I have something fully produced, people always end up asking me for the acoustic version.”

Though the future is uncertain, one thing is true — Mayyadda has plenty in store. “I’m eager to hear what she does with a bigger budget or with further sonic experimentation. I know she’s going to keep putting in the work. She’s quite the generational talent,” Gopinath said. “I imagine her inspiring the next generation of songwriters. We’re all lucky to be around at the same time as her.”

Sahbabii is one of the most interesting artists in the past few years. With his love for animals, other-worldly metaphors, and thematic albums, he has become beloved by the internet. With the three year anniversary of my personal favorite Sahbabii album Barnacles this month, it’s time to get into some of his most intriguing lines on the album.

To someone who is new to Sahbabii, this line may seem to make no sense. Why would Sahbabii think he is the child of a squid and goat, how does he think a squid and goat met to create him? But, when you look deeper into Sahbabii’s career, you will find that Sahbabii has a long history of comparing himself to a squid, notably with his album Squidtastic. He is continuing with his animal theme by also complimenting himself as the ‘greatest of all time’, the GOAT. 

“Racist” is possibly Sahbabii’s most iconic and talked about song. He opens the song with “Bitch, my diamonds racist. All of my diamonds are caucasian.” Which refers to the color of the diamonds he wears, diamonds with an icy white color, often called “colorless diamonds”.  Sahbabii has a substantial collection of jewelry, including a white gold “King Squid” piece, with white and black diamonds. Sahbabii is using many layers to describe the color of his diamonds here, he is saying his diamonds are so white that they are ‘racist’. He takes his metaphors to the highest level. Throughout the song, he alludes to prejudiced figures like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump as examples and plays with tropes like that of Uncle Tom, to tie back to the chorus of the song. Sahbabii is jokingly implying that his diamonds are racist for only including a certain “race” or color of diamonds, in his case, he is referencing his white diamonds. 

Sahbabii refers to having a lot of money here. He is saying his pockets are so big (from being full of money) that they are pregnant. His pockets are starting a family with the money, his pockets are pregnant with money. Many rappers can be quoted as describing their pockets as fat, but I have yet to find another calling their pockets ‘pregnant’ which begs the question, what is the difference between fat pockets and pregnant pockets? Maybe his pregnant pockets can create more pregnant pockets, possibly referring to multiplying his money. His money can propagate itself, unlike fat pockets, which can be lost with extenuating circumstances. One can only speculate… 

Sahbabii is referencing the Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway movie “The Devil Wears Prada” here. Sahbabii has an upside down cross tattoo with the numbers “666” on his forehead, for this he has faced accusations of devil worship. Sahbabii himself has cleared this up by letting people know it has nothing to do with the devil and instead is about his own religion called “Unknownism” (see caption below). 

 Sahbabii wants a lot of chips and the family bag has more chips than the average sized bag, simple as that. Sahbabii likes chips. 

It could also potentially be referring to chips like chips you get at a table at a casino, that lead to more money. Seeing as Sahbabii is the master of metaphor, this is likely what he’s referring to, although I prefer to interpret it as him literally just talking about enjoying chips. 

Sahbabii doesn’t stop the “chip talk” there, later on the album on “Purple Umbrella” he says, “I’m takin’ they chips like who ate the Lays” referring to Lay’s potato chips. He then continues on the song “Geico” with “Cheese ain’t the same made em’ pass the Doritos.” Sahbabii likes chips, simple as. 

He is referring to someone having a large butt. So big that it’s out of control. So out of control that it needs counseling. Another instance of him taking his metaphors to the most outrageous level, a key component of his lyricism. In the lines right before this he is comparing this “booty” to a rhino, a hippo and an elephant, so big it could be on the behind of a safari animal. 

They thought Sahbabii was gay before they thought Playboi Carti was gay! All I can think about when I hear him say this line is that picture of all the Ugg boots in someone’s doorway at a house party. I like to think Sahbabii was thinking about the same picture when he wrote this line. 

This is my favorite song on the album, it sounds like Sahbabii just wanted to make a song about 7-Eleven. I like to theorize how he could possibly be in seven cars with eleven bitches. Are there seven Sahbabii’s and eleven bitches in each car? Is there only one Sahbabii in each car and a different number of bitches in each car to add up to eleven? If there are eleven bitches in all seven cars with each Sahbabii that would be 7x11 meaning that Sahbabii has approximately 77 bitches total. While all the mathematical speculation is fun, I really think Sahbabii just wanted to make a song about 7-Eleven. 

Sahbabii makes a good recommendation here, komodo dragons are very dangerous and would probably kill you if you tried to play with them. In researching komodo dragons after listening to this line, I found that they are actually venomous and have very sharp teeth. I appreciate Sahbabii’s caution and warning, he is looking out for our safety around exotic animals. 

On Sahbabii’s final track of the album he gives a shout out to Minneapolis legend Prince. Referencing his song “Purple Rain”. I always love hearing another Prince reference in a song.

Sahbabii truly has his own distinctive style, with his elaborate and hyperbolic metaphors and passion for the animal kingdom he has unique lyricism that begs to be talked about. He is a master of metaphor and has an obvious sense of humor within his lyrics. Listening to a Sahbabii album is like going to the zoo and joking around with your friends at the same time. Happy third birthday to Barnacles,  I can’t wait to see what new Sahbabii-isms he has for us in the coming years. 

Destiny Spike is a showgirl in every sense of the word.

Styling herself as a modern “Hoe-sephine Baker,” the local artist is a jack of all trades, with an over decade-long career spent rapping, dancing, and “shaking some titty” (her words) everywhere and anywhere worth going, including SXSW, TC Pride, and the Hi Cotton Ball.

There is no shortage of theatrics — Amid the massive wigs and lavish costumery, Spike is ever the consummate performer, infusing her mix of contemporary dance and great music with plenty of shock value. A careful shoulder pop, a wig snatch, an impromptu Soul Train line with the crowd. In just one night, I've watched her freestyle effortlessly, vogue in mile-high heels then descend into the splits, and perhaps most notably, coax a reticent Minnesotan crowd from the shadows.

“Y’all are being cute,” Spike chided the crowd at this year’s Hi Cotton Ball. “I don’t see any dancing. I don’t want cute. I want chaos.”

2023 is the year of righteous returns for Spike, including a Rolling Stone shoutout, another SXSW gig, and a booked and busy Pride month. Her debut LP, Black Thots Matter (2023), is almost incidental among all these feats, yet a masterwork of its own; a playful, raunchy mix of club anthems and gauzy, introspective tracks. (Consider this a plea to give Spike’s “Wally Oochie” a listen. It is life changing.)

“Destiny is a generational talent,” friend and musician Blu Bone shared in a phone interview. “Just to see someone really in command of themselves and their body in such a raw and truly liberating way, it invites that same energy into you and the space. She really can do anything.”

The Destiny Spike I meet for coffee is not the Destiny Spike you see onstage. Despite her outsized live presence, Spike is a mere 5 ‘3, understated in wire-rimmed glasses and shorn hair. Upon arrival, she immediately enveloped me in a hug.

Over an espresso, Spike launched into her tale. Destiny Davis, better known as Destiny Spike, was born and raised in north Minneapolis. The come-up is simple, and glimmers with signs of prodigy — Davis began dancing at age two, then flit between a host of renowned dance studios, including the Debbie Allen Dance Academy at age 15. After stints at several performing arts schools, Davis eventually dropped out of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

“I didn’t want to be a backup dancer, and that’s what they were teaching us to be,” she said. “My love for dance wasn’t for the money. College just wasn’t flowing, and it was ruining my love for the art. I didn’t dance for years after.”

Amidst this creative rut, music was a happy accident. With her first gig at SXSW in 2013, Davis discovered a newfound passion for hip-hop: “I was actually originally there to dance. I was there with Mod Sun, I didn’t even know who he was! I managed to meet a lot of people in the industry, and they heard me freestyle and just loved it. They kept asking why I wasn't rapping already.” 

Long inspired by the likes of Pusha T, Lil’ Kim, and Missy Elliot, music felt like a natural next step. Upon returning to Minneapolis, Davis began working with local artist Chandria Benson to further refine her craft: “They helped me create bars. My songs used to be never-ending verses. We worked on making hooks, then breaking down my songs and rearranging them… It wasn’t bubblegum, it wasn’t simple, ABC-type rap. The whole process, it was raw, it was new. It felt right.”

A whirlwind of studio sessions followed suit, with Davis’ mother lending Davis her last $40 for studio time. “The rest is history! I’m a rap girl now.”

The years since have yielded a steady stream of shows, Davis performing everywhere from LA to Detroit to Atlanta (the latter most notably a link-up with rapper Jon-Ray). On the sidelines, Davis quietly compiled the best of her work, finally releasing the mastered tracks this year in Black Thots Matter.

“I’ve been sitting on some of those tracks for eight years,” Davis lamented. “They’re my babies! Once I let them out into the world, I can’t change them!” 

Despite its club trappings, Black Thots Matter isn’t just in service of a good time — under the hi-hats and crunchy synths is rumination over Davis’s past and present, of her multifaceted identity as a queer person, a former sex worker, and a proud “Black thot.”

“She’s like a fusion of BbyMutha, Junglepussy, and Nicki Minaj, all at once,” House of 1000 Queers co-runner Annetifa Burns effused over the phone. “But even gayer.” 

“We love her,” Anne’s co-runner Marquis Fleur-de-lis went on. “[Davis] is just so punk. There’s a level of stage presence that comes with someone who has performed a million times for a million people. She is electric. When we worked with her [at House of 1000 Queers’ last show], we ran into a million technical issues. She rolled with every punch.”

A warm, even-keeled conversationalist, Davis kept me laughing well past the cafe’s close. Often derailing, we talked astrology (“It is Gemini season, so I have to buckle up,” she sighed) and chatted about pesky exes, one of Davis’ own calling her midway through our interview. “He wanted to know if this one restaurant was any good,” she divulged afterwards, rolling her eyes. “He could’ve asked Google.”

Davis brings this same effervescent energy to her side projects, including guest appearances on shows Say No Mo and the Wholesome Podcast. It’s obvious Davis could (and should) expand even further than music, though her future is bright as is.

This isn’t to say new music isn’t already in the works: “I have so many emotions about growing up and turning 30. I’m really going through heartbreak and change, and it’s maturing into a sound I’ve never heard from myself. This next chapter is going to be so intense. But don’t worry, I’ll still throw you a party track, a Black thots anthem.” 

“I see [Davis] being the future of hip-hop, especially for women,” producer and frequent collaborator Major G shared over the phone. “She’s so open with her sexuality, and she’s taking everything to the highest decibel possible. It’s all intentional.”

“[Davis] really does have it all,” Blu Bone said. “With her performances, she hearkens back to greats like Josephine Baker and Grace Jones… She shakes the table. She is one of the best performers we have, not just in Minnesota. but nationally. She has so much ahead of her.” 

Olivia Dean has clearly nailed a lot of first impressions. Our initial interaction happened on a cloudy Thursday in midtown Manhattan. In a fugue state after a cross-country flight and an uncertain subway trip, I was standing sheepishly in the lobby of Universal Music’s office like a lost child. I was on three hours of sleep and was checking my phone on the train every 17 seconds to ensure I was heading in the right direction. There was no time to soak in the scenery of Central Park or study people’s outfits to see what trends to bring back home. No, I was on a mission. I had to meet Olivia Dean. 

The door opened, and in walked Olivia Dean and her manager. She was dressed in a tank top and hoodie, big striped pants, and stylish Prada shoes. We shook hands, her grip light and easy, and exchanged smiles, hers filled with radiant tooth gems. We would get time to talk later, but first someone from Island Records ushered her in for a meeting. I tailgated behind them and sat with Teddy, the front desk guy, while they wrapped their business.  

Dean is a 24-year-old singer from London, England. She started singing at a young age in a gospel choir and attended the prestigious BRIT School, whose alumni include renowned voices like Imogen Heap and Amy Winehouse. In 2019, Dean released her first commercial EP Ok Love You Bye. Since then, she has kept busy with a string of singles and EPs. To date, her most-streamed song is “The Hardest Part,” about a relationship perhaps permanently strained, which is closing in on 40 million plays on Spotify. Now she’s gearing up to make an all-important first impression with her debut full-length album, Messy, on June 30. 

Dean and her team are seizing the moment. This year she has done a string of interviews, performed on Later... With Jools Holland, and, most importantly, she finished recording the album. Messy sounds like the album that Olivia wanted to make. There is a level of comfort in Olivia’s music and presence that feels self-actualized. Nostalgic, genre-fluid, organic. Glimmers of some of her influences like Sam Cooke and Bill Withers shine through on Messy cuts like “Ladies Room” and “Danger.” 

This trip to New York was Olivia Dean’s first -- or her first real one, anyway. When she was 18, she spent about four hours here to do backup vocals for Rudimental’s performance on Jimmy Fallon. 

When her label meeting wrapped, I walked in and took a seat. Dean slouched comfortably into a green suede couch across from me. We had a few minutes before she would head to soundcheck for her first-ever solo performance in the U.S. – a sold-out show in the round at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. Just thinking about how busy all of that must be is enough to start an old-fashioned anxiety stomachache for me, but Olivia was as cool as ever. 

“I think when I got into the first sort of chunk of going, ‘OK, I'm going to make an album,’ I was holding myself back for a long time,” she said as she drew circles with her fingers on the suede. "I was like, ‘This is gonna define me ... I need to make the best thing I've ever made.’ I definitely gave myself a box, which I was creating within. And then I was like, ‘It doesn't really matter.  All I can do is write about how I'm feeling right now.’” 

Making any sort of debut is a nerve-racking process. My palms get sweaty before shaking someone’s hands for the first time, so I can’t imagine how it feels to release a debut album. She agreed. It can be a lot of pressure, but it’s not the end of the world. “I think it's what you allow -- the pressure that you're allowed to put on yourself and you allow other people to put on you,” she said. “I've just tried to think really simply about it. I've made the best music I could have made at the time and I really like it. So, if you like it, that's great. If they don't like it, that's cool.” 

When we met, she had been in the city for about 24 hours already and hoped to have some free time the next day to explore Central Park and the Empire State Building. Given her packed schedule, I’m not sure if she had the time. After about 15 minutes, I received a polite-but-firm text to wrap our interview so that she could make it to Le Poisson Rouge. We shook hands, said goodbye, and I headed off for a much-needed nap. 

Excitement was in the air that night at Le Poisson Rouge. Some came from the label folks, of course, eager to see a return on investment. Much came from the crowd, a diverse mix of young people that packed the tables surrounding the stage and lined the walls, phones in hand and smiles on faces. As I walked in, one person in line asked if I had any extra tickets. No dice.  

I do feel for that person, though. They missed out on a special performance – her first ever as a solo artist in the U.S. Dean had a gentle, yet commanding stage presence that enamored the audience. Joined by a pianist and bassist --her drummer’s visa got denied)-- she performed a 45-minute set that explored tracks from her EPs. Before “Be My Own Boyfriend,” an audience member correctly guessed it was coming, shouting the song title during Dean’s monologue about self-love. Of course, there were also yet-unreleased tracks from Messy. She played piano and guitar, covered the Aretha Franklin classic “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and brought out Leon Bridges to perform their new duet version of “The Hardest Part.” 

When I asked her what the hardest part of being Olivia Dean is, her manager shouted an answer as Olivia paused to think: “Perfection.” Olivia’s answer for herself was “Separation,” delineating between Olivia Dean the person, and Olivia Dean the budding pop star. She acknowledged her perfectionism, though. “I like striving for things to be excellent, which I think is a good trait but also a bad trait,” she mused. “Because sometimes you don't get anything done. You're waiting for something to be perfect. But, sometimes 80% perfect is still really good. You can't be perfect all the time ... My album is called Messy because it's a reminder to myself to relax.” 

The desire to eschew perfectionism guided the process of recording Messy. The tap of a piano pedal, the odd slightly off-beat guitar lick, and other uniquely human touches were kept in to create a sense of warmth and soul. Although she tries not to let the pressure get to her, she realizes the impact a debut can have. A debut can stand the test of time and become a statement for the artist’s entire career.  

Dean pointed to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as an example of how to do it right. “It was just her in music form. It wasn't her trying to do a bit of that, or a bit of this,” she said, reaffirming her belief that honesty in music is non-negotiable. Part of being honest is doing what you feel. Olivia believes that doing this allows great music to be made. “I think you have to be a little bit selfish at the beginning in the creation pile on, like, allow yourself to be a bit self-indulgent so that you can be vulnerable.” 

The show at Le Poisson Rouge was intimate and honest, two things she strives for in her music. Dean chose not to adopt a stage name because she wants her true feelings to come through. “I want to be honest... It just felt like the obvious thing to do,” she reflected. “I'm not a particularly abstract person. I'm not writing about big things. I like small things and human things. That made sense.” 

With her start in gospel choir and history with musical theater --which she studied at the BRIT School before she believed she could pursue singing solo-- Dean is a natural performer. “Ladies Room,” a standout from Messy, is the track that she’s most excited to perform live. “I just wanted to create something that will be so fun to perform live. It’s an homage, like a love letter to the girls’ bathroom. I love the chaos in there sometimes.” Her original idea was to take a voice recording of someone she met in the ladies’ room at her local pub, but decided against it. “How would I feel if I heard a song on the radio or, you know, just stumbled across something, and it was me like chatting shit about my boyfriend?” 

Messy will be released for all to hear on June 30. Who knows what will happen once it comes out? Regardless, she wants to be present through it all. Immediate joy, she says, is most important. “I'm trying to practice [being happy] day by day, rather than constantly like looking ahead and then actually not taking in moments when you're in them,” she shared. “Like, especially on this trip. I've just really tried to wake up every morning and be like, ‘You must be happy today and be thankful and, like, just live hour by hour.’” 

Olivia Dean seems to be enjoying the moment, dizzying as it can be. She smiled after the show at Le Poisson Rouge. She shared that she was nervous before coming out. I told her that if she wouldn’t have said that I would have never guessed.  

Between laughing about the legal and moral efficacy of recording strangers or talking about crying while watching The Little Mermaid remake, it seems like her talk about being herself and being honest are, well, honest. Olivia Dean has the sort of sincerity and charm that makes her hard not to root for. I hope she had some time to check out the Empire State Building. 

Messy will be released on Friday, June 30. 

Editor’s note: Looks like she got to see it.

Vogue Down, a Minneapolis ballroom collective, is bringing the ballroom tradition and more to a new generation in Minneapolis.  

With a successful April event and more on the horizon, the group says that its main goal is to bridge the generational gap in the ballroom community and create space for queer BIPOC individuals to get together. 

Their next event KIKI ZONE: Pride Edition will be held at Lush Lounge in Minneapolis on Wednesday, June 14. 

I sat down with Donald Thompson (@therealdonald_), a founding member of Vogue Down, to speak about KIKI ZONE: Pride Edition and what Vogue Down is. He acted as a representative for the collective, which also includes Yoni (@yoni.light), Jojo (@jojo_ventus), and Zora (@zoradotcom).  

 The Beginnings of Vogue Down 

 “Our mission was just to find a place at first, to have space for queer BIPOC individuals to get together and be able to learn about ballroom and be in community with each other, and we just did not have that,” said Vogue Down.  

 Vogue Down has been a collective for a little over a year, starting in March of 2022. “At first we were just in studios, randomly booking things. Then it turned into a whole collective and we thought, let's share this with the community. We started making the sessions open to anybody who would like to come,” shared Vogue Down.  

What is vogueing? What is ballroom? 

 “Vogueing is an expression of oneself, an expression of all the energy and the feelings someone has. They’re expressing that through their dance. Vogueing is not just a dance, it’s a lifestyle,” explained Vogue Down.  

 “Vogueing is a part of ballroom, but ballroom is so much more. Ballroom means different things to everybody, but ballroom was made by Black and Latinx people of color to help us have a space that was just for us,” Vogue Down clarified, “A place to be our own celebrities, because the world just wasn't made for us that way.”  

 “Energy is the biggest thing. The energy of the room is what people go away with and why they keep coming back,” said Vogue Down.  

 What happens at a ball?  

 “You start the night with everybody coming in. Everybody's piling in from different states, maybe even different countries– different walks of life, when everyone comes in, they will start LSS,” told Vogue Down. LSS which stands for legends, statements, and stars, is a fundamental component of ballroom.  

 “LSS is calling out people in the community who are at those status points,” explained Vogue Down.  

Key definitions

Star:  “Somebody who has been walking, they’re new, but they maybe have an ‘Of The Year’ award or some type of acknowledgement from the community for walking and being new.” 

Statement: “A person who’s solidified in their category.” 

Legend: “Somebody who is undeniable, somebody who has done more than that average person walking in that category and gone beyond. They have brought something unique from their own personality and their own self to the category.” 

Icon (highest honor): “Somebody who everybody knows, everybody has seen people learn from them, everybody has seen the work they've done in the community, the change that they have brought to ballroom, there's been something there.”  

After LSS, categories will begin. Categories for the KIKI ZONE: Pride Edition event are as follows: OTA (open to all) runway, OTA performance, OTA hands performance, realness (Male Figure, Female Figure), face (MF, FF, Gender Non-conforming) and sex siren (MF, FF, GNC)."

What makes KIKI ZONE special

 “KIKI ZONE: Pride Edition is different from any old ball because it is made by younger people in the Twin Cities that have been doing ballroom for about a year now and have immersed themselves in it,” said Vogue Down. “It is really just showing that ballroom has been reignited in this city by the younger generation.” 

“When we started opening these sessions and walking, it really got the older generation excited to throw balls again. So, they're starting to throw balls again. It's just a whole domino effect,” explained Vogue Down.  

“KIKI ZONE: Pride Edition is more of an event than a ball, it’s an event plus a vogue night. It’s really to encompass all BIPOC artistry in every different form that the Twin Cities brings. That’s why it’s drag, rapping, singing, and dancing. All types of experiences,” said Vogue Down.  

KIKI ZONE Code of Conduct

Who: Anyone who’s interested in seeing the performances and learning about the scene. 

“I'm calling anybody eager to see amazing BIPOC performances and amazing BIPOC talent. I'm calling anybody who was in a house here, anybody who's interested in ballroom, anybody who loves artistry from Black entertainers, put on by Black entertainers. I'm calling everybody who will be respectful and understand that this is a space put on by young, Black, Queer adults.”  

How to dress: Pop out, be creative. 

“Pop out with your best outfit. Your best creative outfit. You could spend $10 and still be in an amazing outfit. You could be in Gucci and it looks crazy. It's all about your creative mind. We're really pushing people to get into the creative mind. There's no theme. There's no nothing. It's pride. Be creative. Come in with your best things. Step out. Bring your unique style to the table.” 

What to know: Come with respect and positivity.  

 “Do not disrespect what you don't know. That's my number one thing. I would say second, when you come in a space, it's already built off positivity. So bring positivity. We don't want any negative vibes if you have them. Don't come. And then thirdly, I would say, one of the biggest rules, is to have fun. This is something that has never been brought to the Twin Cities. People have been loving it so far, and I want people to keep loving it. Really just bring good energy to the space and have a good time. Get a drink, sit down, watch the performers, maybe walk in a category if you feel up to it, have a good time.” 

How to prepare: To walk a category, just show up and step out!  

 “To walk a category, just show up and step out there. Before walking, you should do your research. If you put in ballroom on YouTube, so many things will pop up. Look at clips, watch documentaries.” 

Vogue Down works to try to teach the community about the rich history of Ballroom culture with their series “History 101,” (check out these videos on their Instagram page here).  

Another place to learn more about the culture Vogue Down is bringing to Minneapolis is through documentaries. Vogue Down recommends “Paris Is Burning,” “How Do I Look,” “My House,” or “Pose,” and “Legendary,” which is a ballroom competition show.  

What this event means: Connection. 

 “I think what it means for us is a connection of all people in the cities who have been interested in ballroom and who also are in ballroom to know each other. I think the biggest thing you can give people is a platform, and we're giving people a platform to showcase who they are. The four of us are new, we have only been doing this for about a year, but I know there are people that will have those answers for you. So I just want everybody to be able to network and connect with people that they could get something from and give something.”  

Get Excited! 

“I'm most excited to meet new people. I'm excited to see the creative expression people bring to their category. I'm most excited to see the drag performers we have with our Lady Camille Cassadine (@ladycummeal), your recent flip phone superstar Cariño (@carino.xoxo), who is the host of Drag Duels - a really big drag show in the city, and a great drag performer as well. We’re also having Destiny Spike (@destinyspikee), who is a Black woman artist who is going to shut down the stage as a rapper. So, it is going to be amazing. I'm excited just to see all the creativity.”

Follow Vogue Down on Instagram for more.

On the three-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, I find myself reflecting on the past few years and how our city and community navigated such profound emotional turmoil. I often look back on that time and remember the fires that engulfed Minneapolis, the businesses that crumbled, and the violence inflicted upon Black individuals by the state as we demanded justice. However, amidst the chaos, I also remember the ways our community came together, the outpouring of love, and the instinctual desire to hold each other close.

Music has always played a crucial role in amplifying Black stories and narratives, serving as a universal language to break barriers, foster understanding, and promote healing. As I’ve reflected on the last three years, I think about the music that inspired me and kept me going through that turmoil. I felt called to speak with some of the artists who created it.

Just days ago, I had the privilege of sitting down in my home with four talented Minneapolis musicians who have been using their art as a powerful tool for healing, unity, and resistance. SoulFlower, Breezy2Fresh, Mack OC, and Oaojooo shared their experiences, inspirations, and thoughts on the role of music in bringing about social change.

• Breezy2Fresh is a rapper who began making music to express himself, which evolved into finding an outlet to learn more about himself and tap into his emotions. Through that, he’s been able to relate to others on a deeper level. (Instagram, Spotify)

• Mack OC is a multifaceted artist who focuses mainly on Afro-fusion, R&B, and rap. He believes music has the power to remind us of all that we are more alike than we are different. Mack hopes that he can relate to people through his craft and help others to feel seen in their experiences when they hear his stories. (Instagram, Spotify)

• Oaojooo is a rap and R&B artist, his connection to music lies in empowerment and he uses his craft to share his stories and experiences. “I like to tell stories with my music, and everyone has a story to tell.” (Instagram, Spotify)

• SoulFlower is a practicing healing artist who channels intuitive messages through music and uses it as a tool of feeling emotions to have a more grounded experience in this “mess of a world” we’re in. (Instagram, Spotify)

The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent uprisings around the world left an indelible mark on these artists' lives, compelling them to respond to the profound moment. Here are selected moments from our two-hour-long table talk.

SoulFlower described the summer of 2020 as surreal, with the widespread dissemination of traumatic events through social media. " I wasn’t as into making music as I am now, but during that time I really wanted to connect with community,” she said. “There was a lot of destruction but how do we get together and heal?" To fulfill this purpose, she co-founded Revolution Radio, a platform that provided resources and mutual aid. By channeling their emotions into art, rallies, and protests, artists like SoulFlower found spaces to connect with others experiencing the same emotions, fostering a sense of unity amidst the chaos.

For Breezy2Fresh, the unrest following George Floyd's murder was a tipping point in a long-standing struggle against police brutality and systemic racism. “It had already been brewing,” he said. “Even before George Floyd, there were a few of us that were making music geared toward this moment in history. I had made music about Philando [Castile] — that was right in our back yards too. I didn’t really make music directly about George Floyd because I realized as angry as a lot of us were, there needed to be uplifting messages as well.” Outside of his own craft, Breezy saw beauty in the chaos, witnessing fellow artists use their art to support our community. 

Mack OC felt a strong sense of responsibility as an artist during that time. He wanted to be able to answer his future children's questions about what happened in Minneapolis in 2020. He explains, “We’re all living in history, and I realized how monumental that was to have in our own backyards. Even if it never ends up in history books I had to think ‘How can you make an impact when it’s right in front of you?’”  While thinking about how this would impact the state of the world going forward, Mack’s creativity was heavily fueled by the desire to relate to the people around him in that moment and create something that allowed people to feel understood in their pain, frustration, confusion, etc.

Oaojooo expressed the challenges he faced in creating at the time. “It wasn’t till 2022 that I learned about toxic positivity, and I realized that I stunt my creation sometimes because I worry about being too negative or frank but that’s equally a part of it all,” he said. “The pain and turmoil are equally a part of the beauty and the creation.” Despite the difficulties, he drew inspiration from the sense of purpose that arose during those events, witnessing the flame of purpose ignite in people who previously searched for meaning.

The conversation then shifted toward the role of creativity and art as a form of resistance. SoulFlower emphasized that creating art challenges the notion that individual voices do not matter. “I think art is inherently activism because the world wants to push that your voice doesn’t matter and society wants to dim your light but when you make something that comes from you, it actively pushes against that narrative,” she said. “By making things and sharing your perspective on them you’re actively resisting a narrative that’s against you.”

Breezy2Fresh added that ideas are powerful, and art serves as an effective medium for conveying those ideas. By daring to put forth ideas for positive change, artists engage in activism that challenges societal norms.

Mack OC shared frustration with the notion that artistic expression is often discredited as a form of activism. He recalls a high school protest where he felt he could best contribute to a protest by making a song, only to be told that it did not count. He believed that speaking through music is just as impactful as giving a speech. “People underestimate the effect,” he said. “While we go through these traumatic experiences everyone can pick out a song that got them through or really inspired them. It’s about the effort and speaking from your own heart. Adding your own piece to the puzzle.” 

With the three-year mark upon us, the artists shared their personal growth and reflections on the journey. Breezy2Fresh, known for his introspective music, expressed a change in his approach, stating, "I’ve shifted more towards making people comfortable with introspective music and actively trying to process our emotions." He also highlights the importance of community outreach and pondered ways to uplift the community beyond rallying together. 

Oaojooo recounted his personal journey during that time, acknowledging the bittersweet nature of his experience. "I forget about what I was going through at that time because of how much community I did have and how much inspiration I had and creativity I was indulging in," he shared. However, on a broader scale, he expresses a sense of simmering down and returning to survival mode, rather than feeling liberated to create and show up in the world as he desired.

Mack OC emphasized the ongoing responsibility to support and amplify Black voices, acknowledging the need for continued activism and community engagement. “Feeling like I’m already a Black man that’s here but that complacent mindset and victim mentality sets me back at times,” he said. “Since then, it’s made me feel disappointed in myself and my change in mindset. Now that everything’s died down it feels like nobody cares what you have to say unless you have a major platform — but this is still my responsibility. People still need support and help, and to be heard.”

SoulFlower reflected on the evolution of her artistry. “I’ve done a lot of self-growth into my artistry and being more grounded as an individual,” she said. “I still have a lot of passion now for making music. I can see in my writings the passion that I had that summer was fueled by anger but now it’s fueled by love. I’ve also learned to stand and affirm myself in the face of people who had different thoughts and views as my own and not losing my perspective to others while still seeing them.”

The artists further revealed the profound impact of their music during that period. Oaojooo discussed his song "21KCUF," emphasizing his commitment to work regardless of his circumstances and his intention to shed light on the harsh realities of the world.

Mack OC highlighted his tracks "Activated" and "The Bigger Target," which serve as self-motivational anthems and reflections on navigating a predominantly white society as a Black man.

Breezy2Fresh shared insights into his song "Love," which delves into the complexities of anger and malice, and how he realized the necessity of fighting with love rather than perpetuating the cycle of hate.

SoulFlower recalled her involvement in rallies, choosing to sing Nina Simone's "Blackbird" for its evocative nature. She also highlighted her song "Passion," which explores carrying the weight of identity and the desire to be seen authentically.

“I talk about carrying something around and around and you never put it down,” SoulFlower said. “I feel like it translates to the baggage we all hold to this identity that’s put on to us not only being Black, but being proud of being Black and all that comes with that label and how we’re supposed to be and I think the song speaks to all of us wanting to be seen for who we are truly at our core.” 

As artists, Breezy2Fresh, Oaojooo, Mack OC, and SoulFlower continue to grapple with the aftermath of George Floyd's murder and its impact on their artistry. Their voices serve as a testament to the power of creativity in driving change and the ongoing need to address systemic issues and create a more just and inclusive society. Through their music and activism, these artists inspire others to engage in meaningful conversations and work toward a better future.

Moise Igeno wakes up from a dream in which he plays a supportive character whose friend strives to become a professional Broadway dancer. She’s in school, and in order to make ends meet, performs erotic dance at night. Moise records voice memos or writes notes after waking up from dreams like these — which he thinks of as movies or films — and this one inspired the song “RASPBERRY TEA” on WE SURVIVED THE STORM, VOL. II.

VOL. II follows the 2022 release of WE SURVIVED THE STORM, VOL. I, where Moise established his skill in creating smooth, funky R&B tracks. On “BURN YOU OUT,” groovy basslines, seductive guitar leads, and deep drum beats reminiscent of ‘70s lay over flirtatious verses. The nimbly synth rhythms on “BACKYARD PARTY” are perfectly fitting for a serene summertime breeze.

Moise considers himself an optimistic person. With songs primarily written during the quarantine period of the pandemic, the two volumes of WE SURVIVED THE STORM are filled with hope — as if envisioning relief. Because Moise knew the music would be released in a year or two, he predicted the tumultuous energy in everyone’s lives would ease. “Like every storm, it does pass eventually, and you grow from that,” he says. 

The decision to split the album into two parts was strategically based on the artist’s observation of the way people tend to consume music at the present moment: hastily. “It just creates more air for [the songs] to breathe and be listened to. I think the most frustrating part, sometimes, when you're making music is just feeling like no one cares.” He continues, “But I think it's the best way I could control that and just really give the songs the time of day that I think they deserve.”

The artist didn’t want each volume to feel like a mixtape, so he thoughtfully considered the order of songs and attained exactly what he set out to achieve. When listening to VOL. I and VOL. II individually, each feels like a complete body work. The former builds upon playful instrumentation to soothe minds, and the latter incorporates dreamy harmonies to chart the luminescent space between desire and true intimacy. Both flow seamlessly from one track to the next. 

Moise’s introduction to music making came when a high school friend, who rapped and self-produced, invited Moise to give it a try himself. It all started when he remixed “Spotlight” by Gucci Mane and Usher, which his classmates met with approval.

Fast forward a few years, and Moise quickly gained international attention upon the release of his first single, “Wildflower,” in 2017, which he made on Garageband in his bedroom. A talent scout from the YouTube channel COLORS had been following the artist on Soundcloud and invited him to Berlin to record a performance of the song.

Moise’s style is influenced by familial tastes — like his dad’s love of Bob Marley and 2Pac and his mom’s appreciation of Destiny’s Child. One of the most significant impressions may have been his uncle’s interest in music videos. Each time Moise visited, he and his uncle would watch an archive of MTV videos recorded on VHS. “All the songs I really loved, I also vividly remember the music video with [them], and I really appreciate that,” he says. “I spent a lot of time in middle school [and] high school rushing home to watch [Total Request Live] and 106 & Park — all those Top 10 music videos back when we didn't have YouTube.” 

The experience with VHS recorded content informs Moise’s perspective of how visuals enhance interpretation of music. “Hopefully, people [who] do come in contact with [visual components] — whether it's a music video, whether it's the cover art, [or] the songs — they appreciate that.” Moise enjoys how two people can close their eyes, listen to the same song, and formulate completely different mental images. He also appreciates when artists offer a glimpse into their own worlds, and he takes pride in offering his perspective in the form of music videos.

The dream that led to “RASPBERRY TEA” materialized when Moise enlisted his longtime friend, video director Effy Kawira, to produce a music video for the song. In February 2023, they teamed up to spend one day filming for 15 hours. 

In the video, a dancer — played by the multi-hyphenate artist XINA — practices ballet by herself in a studio with bright daylight. Each graceful bodily movement translates to a seductive pose in a dimly lit venue with dollar bills on the floor. She trades pointe shoes with platform heeled boots and twirls around a pole. As Moise watches XINA, it’s not a lustful scene; he seems to be admiring his friend’s strength and tenacity.

Already skilled in the extreme sports of pointe and pole work, XINA was happy to share her energy with Moise’s vision. “The character was sort of, almost exactly who I am in real life, so it was kind of a beautiful, serendipitous moment,” XINA says. She recalls Moise describing the scenario as a coincidence, but she believes in the power of manifestation, and from her perspective, Moise’s dream planted the seed that connected them. 

Moise’s songwriting stems from his lived experience too — not only dreams. The song “LEE SCRATCH PERRY” captures a specific moment in time: When sitting in a studio with Elliot Roche, who plays guitar on WE SURVIVED THE STORM, Moise saw a news headline about the death of the Jamaican singer/producer, Lee “Scratch” Perry. He and Roche began listening to a few of Perry’s tracks, got inspired, and wrote the lyrics, guitar, and drums parts in one session. 

Other songs are based on his peers’ experiences. Explaining why the project’s title includes “WE” instead of  “I,” Moise says, “Not all the lyrics and stories are 100% about me. When I write stuff, I also like telling the stories of others and hoping that other people can relate…. [The title] includes everyone who's listening to it [and] everyone who made it.”

Moise shares others’ stories in mediums other than music as well. XINA and Kawira were the first guests on his new YouTube series, “In Conversation,” where he captures conversations he’s already having in real life — just adding a camera and microphones. By recording these chats with fellow creators, he hopes to spread knowledge in and outside of the Twin Cities community about navigating artistic struggles.

Whether it’s talking about how he combines his and others’ realities to form lyrical narratives, or how dreams can act as catalysts for his music, Moise emphasizes his own belief in manifestation — how mindset determines outcome. “If you don’t put your mind towards it, then you definitely won’t accomplish it,” he says. “But if you at least recognize it and make it a goal, or write it down, [or] tell yourself positive affirmations… I think that’s how things happen for us.” 

Moise hopes WE SURVIVED THE STORM accomplishes his goal of providing listeners with sonically satisfying tunes that embody any mood: “When you're sad, when you're happy, when you're celebratory, when you're down on your luck — I think there's really a song throughout the 14 tracks that touches one of those emotions.”

WE SURVIVED THE STORM, VOL. II is out May 26 via Unity Records. Moise and David Maxwell host an album listening party and art gallery at Public Functionary on May 26. RSVP here.

At just 20 years old, Nakia Neal is making a name for herself in the Minneapolis music scene as Bigg Kiaa. Bigg Kiaa earns her name with her energy and personality each time she performs. 

Early Life and Nakia Marie

 “I was three when I first rapped on the mic,” Bigg Kiaa said, “It was nothing special just blah blah blah, but that’s the first time I remember having an actual experience doing music myself.” “My dad, he had a studio in the house, he didn’t take music seriously, but he just loved music,” She spoke fondly about her memories of him and her cousins sharing their love for music in the studio together. 

“I grew up in Arkansas, in a town called Marianna. That’s why I named the tape MARIANNA. My whole childhood was down there. I grew up on a farm– a whole bunch of acres, we had goats, chickens, cows, all that. The power went out one night, we were bored with nothing to do out there and I was like, ‘Dad I want to make a song.’ We sat there and I told him all the things I like, and he’d make lyrics out of that, it was a real teamwork process. That’s when I became Nakia Marie,” said Kiaa. 

From that moment, she began to take music more seriously. “My dad just knew, this is a hit. He’s one of those people that will call out a person and say, ‘They gon be something’ and then they actually are something. He's done that for a few basketball players that I know of. We came back to Minnesota, shot a music video, and I started performing,” said Kiaa. 

Nakia Marie quickly became a big name in the Minnesota music scene, “From age seven to nine, I had this peak in my career as Nakia Marie. I opened for the OMG Girlz at the Armory at eight years old. I was at First Ave’s main room at age nine at the TC hip hop awards on my birthday, January 18th,” said Kiaa. At her peak as Nakia Marie, she was almost in a Nickelodeon movie and set up for a record deal.

Then, at age nine, she stopped music altogether. “My dad ended up going to jail. He was my everything back then. I told you, he wrote my first song, he was my producer, my manager– my whole world just crashed when he went to jail. I didn’t want to do any of that without my dad,” said Kiaa. “He kinda fucked it up for me,” laughed Kiaa. 

“I feel like it all happened for a reason. If I would've gotten everything back then I would have been a child star. I would’ve been sitting here as Nakia Marie and not Bigg Kiaa, and I feel like Bigg Kiaa is who I am, my own person. I went through shit without my dad to become who I am right now. It was a sad time but everything happened for a reason, because you know, I love this guy!” said Kiaa pointing to herself. 

Becoming Bigg Kiaa

Kiaa took a long break, not making music at all but still listening avidly. “Even with taking a break. I'm heavy on listening to music, my heart belongs to music. So, I was obsessed with Kehlani for years before I jumped back in. She's my everything,” said Kiaa. 

“Bigg Kiaa came in like 10th grade. I remember walking down the hallway going to science class and writing on notebook paper getting back into it. I wrote a song called ‘Chasing the Bag’. You can probably still find that on SoundCloud,” said Kiaa.

“That was the first song I feel like I wrote on my own, my dad got out of jail that year. So I feel like once my dad stepped foot back in my life, it took off,” said Kiaa. 

She described becoming Bigg Kiaa through discovering her own identity, how she liked to dress, and how she liked to show up in the world. “I'm a masculine gay woman. But then, I was still femme. I was bisexual at the time and I hadn't grown into myself yet. I wasn't comfortable in my own body,” expressed Kiaa. 

When she started to dress in a way that made her more comfortable and really show up as herself is when she felt herself starting to become Bigg Kiaa. “Boom, 12th grade, I finally became masculine and I stepped into myself. I feel like a whole new confidence came over my body,” said Kiaa. “I came out. People knew I liked girls, but I feel like my real come out was when I stepped out and presented myself physically how I feel inside,” said Kiaa. 

Nicki Minaj, Yeat, and Listening to Her Own Music

“Music is everything to me. Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What do you see yourself doing if it wasn't for music? What would you do?’ I said, ‘music’. I would be a part of it in any way I could, even if I wasn’t making my own,” shared Kiaa. 

Kiaa told me her regular listening rotation includes a lot of R&B and pop, “I'm big on Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, that era of Usher.” When I asked her who her favorite pop artist was she said, “Katy Perry. It does not change for me. I just love her.” 

Kiaa didn’t hesitate to name her favorite rapper, “Yeat. I actually fucking hated him at first. When he first came out, I hated him. I did not like it. But, then my friend Kumari Cloud was like, ‘bro, you can't listen to Yeat, you gotta feel it, he's a feeling.’ As a person who loves music, I can understand that,” said Kiaa. 

I later talked with Kumari Cloud about Kiaa and he described her as “Versatile and hungry.” He went on, “She’s high energy and has a big heart. She’s hungry, that goes for music and her personality. Her tenacity, it’s like a beast on a song.”

Music Process 

“I feel like my music process is what really lets me know that I have undiagnosed ADHD. If you told me right now, write me a song, I’d have it for you in the next 15 minutes. So, if I know I'm about to go make music, I can make music,” explained Kiaa. She shared that she currently has 489 unreleased songs on her phone, “I make music all the time,” said Kiaa.

“Most of the time, when I know I'm about to go to the studio and don't got anything written, I'm just listening to beats or I hear some shit that inspires me,” said Kiaa. When she goes into the studio she has her producer Beats by Stix with her, “You know, 21 Savage and Metro Boomin. When they have a track, it's a hit. I have my Metro Boomin,” expressed Kiaa.

Their collaboration can be seen on Kiaa’s rage tape, MARIANNA.  “Some songs that I find myself listening to the most would be my rage tape honestly, which contains eight songs. I'm really proud of that tape because it came together over years, like some songs on that tape are two years old,” said Kiaa. 

Bigg Kiaa listens to her own music all the time, “Why would anybody else like your music if you don't like your music?”

Opening for Lizzo and Finding Her Purpose

“A few years ago, my whole management situation fell apart and I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do music anymore, I was really about to quit,” said Kiaa. 

She described a phone call she got from Sophia Eris (Lizzo’s DJ), five days before Lizzo’s show at the Xcel Energy Center, “She calls me and she's like, ‘Are you free Tuesday?’ and I'm like ‘Yeah’, she's like, ‘Well I want you to come open up the Xcel Energy Center for Lizzo,’ and  fireworks are going off in my head,” said Kiaa. 

“That was like the universe telling me like bro you're made for this, be fucking patient, calm down. I know that wasn't gonna change my life overnight, I wasn't going to be this global sensation just because I did that, but it did change my life spiritually. I can not be more grateful for that. Like I said, it made me realize this is my purpose.”

Bigg Kiaa’s performances only continued to keep up energy from this performance. During her performance at Essjay The AfrocentricRatchet’s show at 7th St Entry, I saw first-hand that she brought the same energy she describes. She has also performed at the Twin Cities Pride Festival and countless other legendary local venues. 

“Anything that I love, I love it. I really love it to the max,” professed Kiaa. Music is one of those things. 

Bigg Kiaa Fun Facts

Favorite show: “I'm a real TV watcher, see this tattoo on my face, that’s the bad girls club logo. it’s my favorite reality show in the fucking world. Or American Idol.”

Favorite game: “I really enjoy playing games. I love video games. I'm not really good at them. I just play them because they're fun. But I am really good at Fortnite, I’m the shit at Fortnite.”

Favorite color: “My favorite color is red. I love the color red. My second favorite color would be black.”

Favorite food: “My favorite food is crab legs. Seafood period, but crab legs.”

Favorite animal: “Cats. I love cats. I'm a cat lady. I have two of my own. My cats have Instagrams, my first cat's name is Zeke. And then my other cat's name is Peaches.

Favorite artist of all time:  “I am a fiend for punchlines. I love them. I love a good lyricist. So, if we said my favorite artist of all time, Lil Wayne.” She went on, “As far as female rappers go it’s Nicki Minaj all the way, even through all the controversy, the barbs cannot hear you, they're so powerful, bro.” 

Music’s ability to transform lives and create hope in desolate situations is something that humans will never fully understand. Music is especially important in the lives of those currently living in incarceration. Opportunities to pursue creative endeavors are highly restricted for those in incarceration, but the need for rehabilitative and restorative programming is incredibly high, so as to help people find a sense of normalcy within and after leaving incarceration.

Organizations like Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop have been working for years to incorporate creative pursuits in prisons across the state of Minnesota, but the opportunities for students of MPWW to work with music have been limited. However, as of April 3rd, four studio booths and a podcast room have been installed at MCF-Faribault thanks to a new partnership between MPWW, Radical Reversal, and the MN Department of Corrections. MPWW proudly shared on their Facebook that these spaces will be home to “songwriting, beat making, audiobook narration, podcasting, and so much more.”

Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s journey to making creative writing classes a mainstay of Minnesota prisons began in 2011 with a single class at MCF Lino Lakes. Today, the organization proudly hires over 25 instructors “who have taught more than 250 creative writing classes to over 3,000 men and women in every adult state prison in Minnesota,” according to their website.

Radical Reversal, the organization that has partnered with MPWW to bring the music studio in MCF Faribault to life, describes its mission as providing rehabilitation through creative endeavors in correctional facilities across the country. According to their website, they “conduct poetry workshops, seminars in music and music production, readings and performances.” So far, they’ve successfully implemented studios in Massachusetts, Alabama, and Minnesota.

Jennifer Bowen, founder and artistic director of MPWW, shared that the key to making these programs a success is to be consistent in the pursuit of community. These programs require a willingness to be vulnerable and to be dedicated to the craft without needing to be celebrated for it. Their priority is creating transformative arts programming that intentionally breaks down barriers to education in incarcerated spaces, and a massive part of that is having teachers that are ready to listen to the needs of their collectives (groups of MPWW students). 

The work that MPWW has done up to this point has only been possible thanks to 12 years of careful planning and protective work. Building trust and maintaining relationships is essential to creating long-lasting arts education programs in spaces like MCF Faribault, but these steps have also required a deep understanding of the systems at play in prisons across the state.

Radical Reversal, MPWW’s partner through the creation of the MCF Faribault Studio, is a relatively new program co-founded by Dr. Randall Horton. Through their mission of amplifying dialogue revolving around incarceration and rehabilitation through creative outlets, they’ve already implemented three studios across the country. Their partnership with MPWW came about after Dr. Horton reached out to Jennifer Bowen, and after months of meeting and coordinating funding between the two organizations, a studio space was established at MCF Faribault akin to other studios Radical Reversal has created across the country.

Studio Space

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With organizations like MPWW and Radical Reversal leading the charge for greater arts education opportunities for incarcerated communities, it’s important to remember that their missions are core to making Minnesota a more equitable place for all of us. Prior to MPWW establishing itself in 2011, Minnesota had no opportunities for prisoners to receive arts programming education. Since the recording studio of MCF Faribault is the first of its kind in Minnesota, it’s a powerful reminder that our state still has a long way to go in order to alleviate the equity issues that impact not just the incarcerated, but all of us. The power of strong arts education, especially music education, cannot be underestimated - and we all deserve the opportunity to make music a part of our lives.

If you’re interested in learning more about Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop or Radical Reversal, you can check them out at their websites. If you or someone you know is interested in donating musical equipment to MCF Faribault’s new installation, please email jennifer@mnprisonwriting.org.

Over the course of a REM cycle, Intellephunk’s 25th anniversary party lived in the space between waking and dreaming. The 12 hour rave wasn’t for the faint of heart — knowing it ran from 10 PM to 10 AM (and amusingly, how it closed out with a pancake breakfast), I felt a mix of awe and unease as I wove through the partygoers. 

That brisk Saturday night, Intellephunk, long a staple in Minneapolis’s underrated electronic scene, had concocted something akin to a spiritual experience: An immense sound system presided over the crowd, thick smoke curling around the dancefloor. Music enveloped, echoed, reverberated. A vast array of gender, race, age, and style packed the floors. One group wore EDM-style fishnets and hair glitter, another jeans and t-shirts, another completely shirtless. People affected either a nonchalant sway or a full-bodied throttle — people were totally at ease with themselves, with no pressure to conform.

Full disclosure? Try as I might, I couldn’t make it to 10 AM.

What is Intellephunk?

Intellephunk is almost impossible to look up. Even after 25 years, a cursory Google search sends you to little more than a punchy website and a private Facebook group (though some strategic Reddit deep dives may get you a bit further). The mystery is purposeful, but not personal: As one of the city’s biggest techno/house promoters, Intellephunk is Minneapolis’s best open secret. 

“There’s a level of secrecy because we want this to be an accepting space,” founder Steve Seuling shared. “[Intellephunk] is for house and techno fans, first and foremost… We want to make sure the people who know about the culture are the ones coming.”

To a small but devoted group of techno buffs, Intellephunk is a safe haven. Aside from assorted themed raves, the Intellephunk team hosts weekly Sunday “Communions” in the summer, with a rotating slate of techno up-and-comers. In conjunction with Minneapolis/Berlin-based label Enemy Records, the two groups organize the Great Beyond, an annual three-day music festival in rural Minnesota. COVID saw new levels of innovation, with Boiler Room-style livestreams over Discord.    

Established during the tail end of 90s rave heyday, Intellephunk came about at a time when raves were hitting the mainstream. These underground, often unregulated dance parties quickly met their commercialized counterparts, major record labels and radio stations sponsoring popular, public “raves” that felt more like concerts. 

Steve watched the transformation in real time: “I grew up listening to industrial music…then I came to Minneapolis in 1993 for college, kind of the heat of the rave days. I got super immersed in the culture a couple years later, and got very inspired by it, even though it was changing drastically. It was harder for people to get away with big events, so they started hosting them in legal spaces like hockey arenas.”

Intellephunk, founded in 1998, is an exercise in maintaining that early 90s, anti-establishment ethos: “Since everything was changing, I was inspired to do smaller, techno warehouse parties. I wanted to do this with my friends, build a community. Most of the raves [in Minneapolis] at the time were very multi-genre, which I really like, but I love techno. Jeff Mills, Plastikman… they’re how I got into the genre.”

Jasmine Seuling, Steve’s wife and eventual Intellephunk co-runner, joined the fold a bit later. “Steve and I have been together since 2003,” she said. “So it’s been almost 20 years!” At that, the duo exchanged smiles. 

“I’d spent a lot of the 90s going to house shows, and I knew a bit about how Steve threw these parties. But at the time, I had a big career. I was also a new mom,” she confided. “In 2018, I finally decided I wanted to step into the role of being a promoter. I didn’t just want to be the wife that sells merch at your shows. I wanted to learn the ropes. Like, booking a DJ, booking flights, curating a lineup.”

Having met the two over coffee for our interview, it was clear Jasmine and Steve were a well-oiled machine. A self-described “husband and wife rave team,” they finished each other’s sentences, traded anecdotes, and discussed Intellephunk logistics with ease. 

That isn’t to say setting up these events is effortless — Each event is mapped out months in advance, and a 30 person crew is needed to set everything in motion. The process is largely DIY, the crew scouting venues, decorating, setting up sound systems, and working hands-on to design promo material. In addition, using a venue’s built-in crew is tricky when trying to create Intellephunk’s particular brand of soundscape.

“There are no free rides in Minneapolis techno,” Steve explained. “No club is set up to do what we do.” Steve, who also DJs under the moniker Centrific, underscored Intellephunk’s commitment to great sound: “We want music that’ll shake your body or tickle your nose before it hurts your ears.” He let out a laugh. “We have specific aesthetics we adhere to, and specific experiences we’re creating. If we have to bring in our own rig in the middle of a snowstorm in December to do that, which we have done, we’ll do it.”

Celebrating 25 years

Two days before Intellephunk’s 25th anniversary, I followed a series of winding roads to a dirt clearing. By the light of day, the venue read far more nondescript, the only sign of any activity a row of cars beside an open, heavy steel door. After surveying the area — largely industrial, nestled in an eerie quiet — and picking my way through brush, the venue’s interior felt startling, bustling with eight or so people working briskly.

Steve and Jasmine greeted me with wide smiles and a quick round of introductions. The two had invited me to watch the party setup, a nine day operation in the middle of what felt like nowhere. The sound system, already fully assembled, loomed over us, perilously close to scraping the ceilings. 

“We started moving the sound system on Tuesday,” Steve revealed. “Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are all for setting up, building the dance floor. Saturday and Sunday are for the party, then the next three days we have teardown for the sound system and deco. It’s just a nonstop production.” 

A quick glance around laid out a scene of deliberate disarray: Some were at work draping the walls with black tarp, others were hauling tables and coolers. Intellephunk’s signature parachute ceiling lay in a heap next to the sound system.

Amidst the mayhem, I found time to hear a story or two. “I was there at [Intellephunk’s] 20th anniversary party. My college graduation was actually that same day,” crew member Mitchell Goedken shared around a laugh. “I may not remember where my diploma is, but now I’m part of the team! And it's the 25th anniversary. We’ve come full circle.”

Techno Testimonials

Midway through Saturday’s rave, I stepped outside to grab some air. In a gated enclosure, people shared a smoke, chatted aimlessly. As I let the cool night air wash over me, I noticed more than a few hugs exchanged. For many, this event wasn’t just an anniversary, but a sort of reunion. A couple committed partygoers brought snacks and folding chairs, clearly intending to power through the night.  

One first time partygoer shared his experience: “I just got into techno! I went to a music festival in March, and afterwards I was hooked. I wanted to find more events in the cities, so I searched Reddit and Facebook… That’s how I found out about Intellephunk.”

“The music is just good,” he went on. “They switch out DJs every two hours, so it’s a fresh variety. Plus the community is so friendly. I went alone, and I met so many new people. There’s such a joy, being close to the stage and feeling the music. Even from the few experiences I’ve had.”

He’s right — The night’s slate of performers was pretty fantastic, a good mix of established and newer talent ranging from Enemy Records head (and party co-host!) Dustin Zahn to rising techno stars Holden Federico and Decoder. Intellephunk’s no phones policy lent the night a certain irreplaceable quality, with a crowd unable to document or profit off the night. 

“NO BULLSHIT,” one of Intellephunk’s Facebook events proclaims. “NO BLINKY STUFF. NO PHONES, PHOTOS, OR VIDEO ON THE DANCEFLOOR. BE HERE NOW.” 

“We set these standards at the door,” Steve mentioned in our in-person interview. “No cameras, no glow sticks. We’ve been doing it since the 90s, and part of it is a privacy thing. Maybe [Intellephunk raves] are something people don’t want everyone in their normal life to know about. To some, maybe this is a sacred space. It doesn’t need to be invaded by an outside eye.”

Looking forward

When asked what this quarter-century milestone meant to them, Jasmine and Steve fell quiet for a moment, deep in thought. Jasmine finally replied, “It just makes me excited for the future. Even though we have all these fun, cool things to look back on, now it’s time to level up, right? Like Super Mario.” The two laughed. “This didn’t just happen overnight, you know? We need to keep refining, and be more strategic.” 

“After 9/11, the rave scene shifted so dramatically … It was only in 2011 and 2012 that things really started picking up again,” Steve remarked. “A lot was different. Back in ‘98, you’d find everything out from a flier at a party, and it’d have an info line on it. Now it’s all online. There’s a new crowd too, a bit older. When we started, our scene was a lot of cis white folks.”

“I’d be the only girl on the dance floor at techno parties,” Jasmine added.

“Right. That era was very much a bunch of white dudes standing around with their hands in their pockets. Back then, yes, we all really cared about the music and creating events around it, but the culture has definitely changed for the better.”

Even prior to 2020’s mass reckoning, Steve and Jasmine have long committed to booking young, diverse talent — most recently, Jasmine’s first solely-devised event, Siren, prioritized a solely femme/women/trans lineup of artists, counting Kanjunga Records’ Angelica and Minneapolis mainstay Niki Kitz among those billed. The Great Beyond also has a history of pulling talent from underrepresented groups. Just take a look at their past lineups, with Marijuana Deathsquads, Aurora Halal, and Juana recurring players.  

“It’s super important to us to be there for marginalized communities,” Steve said. “We want to honor the roots of where the music comes from, you know, the Black and queer culture that surrounds this music. At the same time, we don’t want to take credit… We’re always learning.”

Despite Intellephunk’s pull, including booking major European headliners or legends from the old scene, the crew still keeps their eyes open. “We’re always looking for new talent, and a lot of the time we go to house shows and DIY parties to find it,” Jasmine put in. “We just went to DJ Yasmeenah’s party the other week! We try to get [to these events] early sometimes and see the opener, because maybe that’s the next new up-and-comer. We just want people who have a spark.”  

“When it comes to techno, people call Minnesota flyover country, and we want to change that,” Steve said. “With Communion, we want to keep things fresh, plus give newer artists a platform. People who have been climbing the ladder for a few years. We’re not gonna put out a schedule for the summer. Every Monday we’ll release a new lineup, and that’s how you’ll find out what’s going on.” The ambiguity is part of the magic, and with Intellephunk, you never know what’s coming next. 

As we closed out our interview, I asked the two what their plans for the evening were. “We’re having meatloaf for dinner,” Jasmine responded, then laughed. “Pretty boring after all this talk about parties, huh?”

Intellephunk’s next events include Meta Ta Physika this month in Detroit and July’s Great Beyond Festival in rural Minnesota, as well as Minneapolis staple Communion at The Pourhouse, a weekly summer event showcasing local techno. 

Fashion and Hip-Hop have always inspired each other. Some of the greatest moments in fashion history have been created by hip-hop stars, and some of the greatest moments in hip-hop history have been accompanied by great fashion. The 90s are seen as a renaissance for this symbiosis, with lasting influence for decades to come. 

This is something that Natalie Morrow, the founder and CEO of Black Fashion Week in the Twin Cities, recognizes and wants to bring to life in this year’s Hip-Hop Fashion Show. Starting off as a concert promoter in the 90s, Morrow has witnessed some of the greatest moments in fashion and hip-hop history here in the Twin Cities. She was booking shows at legendary Minneapolis clubs like South Beach and the Red Sea for acts like Method Man and Redman - she even booked DMX at First Avenue, her first sold-out show. 

“I started off in Hip-Hop,” said Morrow. “The 90s era was when I became a young concert promoter, I was 19 or 20. I would bring in people like DMX, who became a good friend of mine. He helped me with Jay Z, Nelly, Mos Def – I’ve done all of them. So, my background is hip-hop and hip-hop shows,” explained Morrow. “90s hip-hop, to me, is the best era of hip-hop, it was amazing. It just brought back happy memories of great music and a great time in my life and a lot of others too.” 

Morrow’s close relationship with the Minneapolis hip-hop community during her time as a promoter brings us to this year's theme for the show, the 90s.

Before the Hip-Hop Fashion Show got its name, it was the “Hollywood Fashion Show.” It was initially a part of the Black Film Festival, which Morrow also runs. Eventually, they expanded it to Black Fashion Week and introduced the Hip-Hop Fashion Show. “Our very first year, we sold out every event. And we just keep doing it,” said Morrow. 

“Black Fashion Week is a platform for creatives of color. We really want to be able to have a space to showcase their talents and arts and projects that they are working on,” said Morrow. Black Fashion Week is a week-long event running from May 5th until May 13th, with the Hip-Hop Fashion Show on May 12th. In Black Fashion Week’s 16 years thus far, it has showcased big names such as Diddy with his Sean John Couture line and Adidas for last year’s show. However, Black Fashion Week’s main focus is showcasing the talent of designers in Minnesota. 

The show features the top six designers that are making a splash in Minnesota each year, “We pick those people that really worked hard and are pushing themselves to reach their goals,” said Morrow. This year’s show will feature @sonelle.couture, @lgendary, @penash_, @noexcuses_brand, Mind Over Matter, @coldbornemarlo_ , and Grave ClothN. Their designs will hit the runway in style at the W Hotel in Foshay Tower.

The Hip-Hop Fashion Show will also feature live performances. You can expect performances from local legends Truth Maze and Muja Messiah. “Truth Maze was definitely one of the biggest names back then, and Muja Messiah. Then our DJ is DJ Huh?What? We are so excited because he’s one of the best hip-hop DJs here,” raved Morrow. The show is all Minneapolis from head to toe, literally.

The rich culture showcased at the show draws big names outside of Minnesota like this year’s sponsor Puma, who will have a stylist create looks for the runway. “I’m really curious to see what Puma is going to send up there, I’m excited to see Puma’s salute to that era,” said Morrow. 

If you want to witness the greatness of hip-hop and fashion in the 90s showcased during Minnesota’s Black Fashion Week, get your tickets while you can! Morrow recommends you get your tickets early so you can have the chance to experience a night at the Foshay full of fashion, music, and community. 

The 50 Years of Hip-Hop Tribute Fashion Show will take place on Friday, May 12 at W Minneapolis. Find more information here.