{"id":54334,"date":"2017-06-29T00:54:03","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T00:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54334"},"modified":"2017-06-29T00:54:03","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T00:54:03","slug":"princess-nokia-is-ready-to-reign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54334","title":{"rendered":"Princess Nokia Is Ready to Reign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Princess Nokia Is Ready to Reign<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Village Voice<\/a>
\n2017-03-29<\/p>\n

Ivie Ani<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nioulex<\/small><\/p>\n

I meet up with Destiny Frasqueri<\/a> \u2014 the 24-year-old Nuyorican<\/a> alternative hip-hop<\/a> artist known variously as Princess Nokia, Wavy Spice, or simply Destiny \u2014 in the East Village<\/a>. I\u2019m running late; she\u2019s even later, so I get to the Astor Place cube<\/a> first. Fifteen minutes later she walks up, dressed, as she\u2019d indicated in a text apologizing for being behind schedule, in a beige duster coat<\/a> and sweats to match, carrying a cherry-print Louis V<\/a> bag. She\u2019s wearing oversize shades, no makeup, just a touch of mascara. Her dark hair blows in the breeze, caressing a diamond-studded choker.<\/p>\n

Frasqueri has appeared in Vogue<\/em>, modeled for Calvin Klein, and had her song \u201cTomboy<\/a>\u201d used for an Alexander Wang runway show. But what makes her a figure of fascination for music aficionados in their teens and early twenties is the way she celebrates the beauty of imperfection, building a hero\u2019s identity out of being a self-described \u201cfucked-up kid.\u201d She\u2019s stunning yet still rough around the edges, rhyming about wearing dirty sneakers, smoking blunts in the stairwell, and proclaiming the power in her heritage. For her followers, her attractiveness lies in her contrasts. \u201cEczema so bad I\u2019m bleeding,\u201d she raps on \u201cBart Simpson<\/a>,\u201d the first track on 1992<\/em>, the album she put up on SoundCloud last September. Sure enough, I look down and her irritated hands are bleeding slightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just ghetto<\/a> as hell,\u201d she says once we\u2019ve settled in at San Loco<\/a> for some chicken nachos. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way that I know how to just be myself.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Frasqueri\u2019s mom passed by the time she was nine, and she grew up living in various homes across the Bronx<\/a>, Harlem<\/a>, and the Lower East Side<\/a>. She experienced abusive foster care, life in the projects<\/a>, and brief escapes to camp with wealthy kids from the Upper West Side<\/a>. She\u2019d skip class but bury herself in books, digging deep into the Black literary canon. (\u201cI am Black Harlem Renaissance<\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cI am Walter Dean Myers<\/a> and Langston Hughes<\/a>, baby.\u201d) She taught herself, studying Kemetic<\/a> philosophy, practicing brujer\u00eda<\/a> and Santer\u00eda<\/a>, claiming her inheritance of Yoruba<\/a> and Ta\u00edno<\/a> cultures, and falling in love with New York City<\/a>. Pissy project elevators and breezy summer barbecues in the street suffuse Frasqueri\u2019s memories. She represents a specific kind of New York, what she describes as her own \u201curban realism.\u201d \u201cWhat makes life beautiful?\u201d she muses at one point. \u201cThe ghetto makes life beautiful. Black people make life beautiful.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…\u201cI\u2019m a Brown Afro-indigenous woman. That makes people uncomfortable as it is. The folks that have a problem with me and say, \u2018You still live with privilege. You not fully Black.\u2019 I can\u2019t win and I can\u2019t lose, so I\u2019ma just keep going.\u201d She smiles. \u201cYes, I\u2019m mixed-race. There\u2019s girls who look like me and glorify being exotic. I have a responsibility to my Blackness.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hip hop’s millennial maverick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,14646,8,20],"tags":[27183,27179,27180,2540,27184,1392,27181,11098,601,27182],"class_list":["post-54334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-destiny","tag-destiny-frasqueri","tag-destiny-nicole-frasqueri","tag-hip-hop","tag-ivie-okechukwu-ani","tag-music","tag-princess-nokia","tag-the-village-voice","tag-village-voice","tag-wavy-spice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54335,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54334\/revisions\/54335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}