“Maybe this is the album you listen to in your car / When you driving home late at night / Really questioning every god, religion, Kanye, b*tch*s.”
These lines are what you’ll be greeted with when you hit play on “Self”, the opener track to Noname’s Room 25. Noname, a.k.a. Fatimah Nyeema Warner, is an independent rapper – or maybe better described as a poet – from Chicago, whose soulful beats and self-exploring lyrics set her on the radar in 2013. This was when she teamed up with Chance The Rapper (another Chicago native) on his mixtape Acid Rap. Since then, Noname has come into her own as a “conscious” rapper, with lyrics exploring heavy topics such as police brutality, the patriarchy, and even colonialism, as we hear in “Self”.
Noname’s lyrics are the type that asks for a permanent space in your brain, especially when delivered alongside smooth, funky harmonies and samples offered by producer Phoelix. In “Self”, we listen in on Noname spitting about politics and personal success. But the song never comes across as holier-than-thou: Noname simply explores what’s on her mind, giving listeners a thoughtful take on heavy subjects that might have seemed impenetrable by music before.
Questioning one’s identity and idols begins the song, and Noname slips into her flow while embracing her culture, criticizing the Reagan administration, and apologizing for “all the calls that I screened”. Within a single verse, Noname’s background in slam poetry is evident – if the lyrics resonate with you (and for me, they did), you’ll find it hard not to listen on repeat just to catch each of her allusions and rhymes. She continues into verse two with reflections on male tropes, like “Mr. Money Man” and “Mr. Miyagi”, the karate master from the fictional movie Karate Kid. “Incredible, incredible emptiness in my body” might refer to diminished self-worth after these archetypal men leave, but Noname reminds listeners of her intelligence, power, and influence with the line, “F*cked your rapper homie, now his *ss is making better music”.
Finally, Noname ends the verse with “My p*ssy teachin’ ninth-grade English / My p*ssy wrote a thesis on colonialism / In conversation with a marginal system in love with Jesus / And y’all still thought a b*tch couldn’t rap, huh”. While it might be impossible to get inside Noname’s head and understand what inspired these lyrics, it’s evident that she’s passionate when it comes to subjects like systemic injustice. After achieving wild amounts of recognition and success, organizing a leftist book club, and baring her soul on Telefone and Room 25, one thing is clear: I hope Noname continues to set fire to what’s conventional through her honest rap.