Released: 2023
As an artist, can you locate your own audience? Do you know who actually listens to your music? Sure streaming platforms can load up data, but are they the people that dig you because of you, or just the people who’re there?
Noname first came to prominence working with Chance The Rapper and Mick Jenkins, but her roots went further back, deeper into the unforgiving world of slam poetry; being on a stage with just your words can be the most humbling experience imaginable.
By the time her first album proper Sundial was released a catalogue of stuff for which there is no space had happened; fearless, provocative and creative in the extreme, she wasn’t the first to worry about commerce perverting art, but she was one of the most honest about it.
Namesake spat shade everywhere, the rhymes turning over at almost the speed of sound as she took aim at Jay-Z, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar for as she saw it their hypocrisy in working with the NFL. Here obviously was that rare thing, somebody making music for themselves, unable to peg their real audience or what they wanted, just the act a bravest throwing out there of something into the void of recent years.
The Voice Of Unreason 