06/12/2023
Nappy Nina playing The Old Hairdressers Sat 16th Dec
Brooklyn based rapper Nappy Nina has carved out a distinctive niche within contemporary hiphop. Her storytelling skills and conversational but precise flow have seen the MC collaborate widely over the course of a young career, with figures ranging from hiphop veterans such as Quelle Chris and Stas Thee Boss, to DIY and avant garde musicians such as Moor Mother.
Growing up inn Oakland, she soaked up the confident sounds of the thriving West Coast hiphop scene of the 1990s, and made associations with writers and poets in the Bay Area and in the slam poetry community. After moving to New York in 2012, she quickly made a host of connections with the hiphop scene in Brooklyn, including a close relationship with Nelson Mandela, who she met on the street. She released a debut EP Naptime in 2015, and extended a lineage of jazz in her family (a broadcaster father-in-law, a musician grandfather) when she toured with Oakland trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire in 2019, a year that also saw the release of her debut album The Tree Act. In the years that followed, she has released music with producers JWords (Double Down) and Bandela (Really Good), among others.
Her talent for observational detail and evoking inner states with her wordplay have seen her address issues including family relationships, mental health and the Black q***r expérience in her music. Her new album Mourning Due addresses the experience of grief, and is released by the Lucid Haus label, of which she is co-founder.
Stas THEE Boss was born on Hilltop in Tacoma, but raised in the Southend of Seattle, Stasia represents her home through and through. After learning all the lyrics to Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" at the age of 8, she realized that a career in Hip-Hop was her destiny. She is formerly one half of the Psychedelic-Space-Rap-Jazz duo THEESatisfaction, with whom she produced, wrote and performed. She signed with Sub Pop Records in 2011, and released two albums. She was able to spread her love of music to many countries like France, UK, Australia, China, Portugal and Iceland. She DJ’s for her labelmate, Nappy Nina.
Dip Friso's brilliant new record Crocodile or Real? A ghost dub broadcast shaped from a special K. Over-ripe bananas and quaaludes, looking across the concrete at screeching burn outs resonating into echo-streaked good morning sunshine. Beat a zig zag serpentine passage, and drift towards solid ground on the platform, are you coming down? Ported and stacked, slip into a stuttering seventh dub. Alarm bells and scattering footsteps in the carriage, that is ugly (what’s going on?) Space liquid danger waters, sink or swim, float forward inside out, Queens Park conga, last train (to Glasgow Central). Perfect storm clouds, take a beat dub cut-up bud, splash it out. Wherever you are, listen in, K!
14 track album
