By refusing to be the 'anti-Cardi B,' the rapper is circumventing the usual labels placed on artists like her
Few artists seem as uncomfortable with classification as Noname, whose very moniker is a rejection of identity. “I try to exist without binding myself to labels,” she said in a 2016 interview. “For me, not having a name expands my creativity. I’m able to do anything.”
On her new album, Room 25, which was released Friday, doing anything means rapping extensively, often to hilarious effect, about sex: On “Montego Bae,” she rhymes about being a “classy bitch” around a guy who “gon’ fuck me like I’m Oprah.” On “Self,” she jokes about her “pussy [writing] a thesis on colonialism.” The 26-year-old rapper has spoken in interviews about how she lost her virginity after releasing her first project, 2016’s Telefone, and on her latest effort, she’s unleashed and embraced her eroticism. “I feel like a lotta people are gonna be like ‘Ughhh.’ A lot of my fans... I think they like me because they think I’m the anti-Cardi B. I’m not,” she said in a recent Fader profile. “I still see people tweeting me sometimes like I’m this generation’s Lauryn Hill or I’m like the conscious version of different female rappers who don’t make the type of music that I make.”
Noname’s fears of fan backlash may be unwarranted: In the immortal words of Common, “conscious cats like sex too.” And beyond their vocals -- Noname delivers her words in a smooth trickle, Cardi has her pugnacious swagger -- Room 25 and Invasion of Privacy formally have little in common. Unlike Invasion, Room 25 is constructed like an artifact of hip-hop’s pre-streaming past. It’s bereft of radio-friendly singles, splashy features and dalliances with disparate regional stylings. Its 11 songs clock in at a tight 35 minutes, neither gaming the streaming system nor making a point of going the other way. In other words, it’s a modest throwback: the rare modern album that is primarily concerned with artistry rather than buzz or commercial success --