Gliding smoothly over gentle beats composed of delicate piano and organ chords and soft percussion, Noname’s debut mixtape Telefone sounds like summer chilling on the porch on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Formerly known as Noname Gypsy, the 24-year-old rapper and poet beautifully delivers an intimate glimpse of life in Chicago as a young woman of color. Her power of lightly conveying harsh themes of discrimination, addiction and violence – keeping the listener engrossed in her word choice and subtlety – can be partially attributed to her beginnings as a poet in the YOUMedia Program for Young Creatives, a teen learning space in partnership with the Chicago Public Library. Her friends and fellow Chicago natives Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, and Donnie Trumpet also attended this program – along with many other local talents. “Yesterday” – the first song on the mixtape – is a eulogy for the much-loved poet and coordinator of the program, Mike Hawkins. In 2010 Noname garnered considerable attention upon winning third place at the annual Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam and has been performing ever since.
The production on Telefone stays close to home with the soulful gospel and R&B sound so characteristic of Chicago, featuring a slew of local musicians such as producers Monte Booker, Saba, Phoelix, and singers The MIND, Eryn Allen Kane, Ravyn Lenae, and Akenya. The album is further reinforced by dynamite verses from rappers Raury, Smino and Joseph Chilliams.
Some may have first encountered Noname’s introspective and deeply melancholy poetry from her verse on Chance the Rapper’s “Lost” from his Acid Rap mixtape. In it she reflects on depression, “I wanna stop seeing my psychiatrist / She said ‘pill pop, baby girl cause I promise you, you tweaked / The empty bottled loneliness, this happiness you seek.’” Telefone is in this same category of blue nostalgia tinged with heartbreak and flickers of hope. “I think the mixtape will be an introduction or conversation about who I am as a young artist,” she told Chicagoist. Indeed, Telefone is an intimate chronicle of youth and transformation – Noname reveals her past, her vices, and her innermost emotions to tell the story of growth and identity. “I’m an artist and I create hip-hop music, poetry. I’m black. I define my identity in being black. I’m weird, I’m awkward,” she described herself in an interview with msnbc. She delightfully reminisces about her Doc Martens-wearing, overbite-bearing awkwardness while growing up on “All I Need”.
Earlier this year the rapper changed her moniker from Noname Gypsy to Noname upon realizing its insensitivity toward Romani people. She announced her apology on Twitter and told fans to address her by her new name. In addition, Noname related this title change to her evolution as a person and an artist by alluding to it on Telefone. Both the first and second tracks on the mixtape (“Yesterday” and “Shadow Man”) contain the word “gypsy” to explain “where/who I was and where I am now,” she stated on Twitter. Change being a recurring theme for Telefone, on “Sunny Duet” Noname recounts the hardships of getting over a drug addiction, “I used to have a name that look like butterflies and Hennessey / I’d trade it up for happiness but joyful don’t remember me.”
Overcoming those moments of weakness has endowed Noname with a graceful flow and strength that she displays when rapping about the plights of people of color in America. On “Reality Check” she laments the institutional racism at the root of her apprehension about not being good enough to pick up when opportunity calls, “And say, my granny really was a slave for this.” The chilling line “I hope you make it home / I hope to God that my tele’ don’t ring,” from “Casket Pretty” is in reference to the incessant violence and police brutality in her hometown of Chicago. Nevertheless, Noname draws strength from the powerful women in her life – her grandmother, her mother, her aunt – and their stories play a prominent role in Telefone. She leads up to a fragment of an interview where Nina Simone defines freedom with, “I know this is a song for overcoming.” Noname is unafraid to dig deep in her soul to find freedom and invites us to do the same, “Don’t fear the light / That dwells deep within.”
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