Genre-crossing Bronx based rapper Princess Nokia is ascending to new heights on her Bloom tour, coming to the Majestic Theater in Detroit this Monday the 18th. Bloom is her first world tour and she will be performing songs from her two new full-length albums released during quarantine, Everything Sucks and Everything Is Beautiful. These two albums truly showcase her range as an artist and her influences from 90s hip hop and the various New York subcultures that nurtured her career.
In Everything Sucks, we meet her more emo persona, a bitter and braggadocious young woman who seeks success to spite her enemies and her critics. Everything Sucks explores more fully the themes she rapped and sung about on A Girl Cried Red, her 2018 mixtape, which contained candid lyrics about her hurt and anger at past traumas of being a foster child and having a loving but inconsistent relationship to her birth family. This Nokia is all about control; she needs no approval from others and the men in her life are plentiful and disposable. Singles from this album include “I Like Him” and “It’s Not My Fault”.
Princess Nokia, real name Destiny Frasqueri, celebrates her duality as a gemini with these two albums. In Everything Is Beautiful, we see the Nokia who embraces and celebrates her loved ones. This Nokia found peace and sings a lot about her chosen family, forgiveness, and transcending the ego. She also celebrates her Puerto Rican heritage and her connection to the strong women in her life who keep her grounded. In tracks like “Soul Food y Adobo”, she layers Spanglish lyrics over brass instrumentals evoking 60s Soul. At age 29, Nokia has taken up the mantle of adulthood and all that entails. She no longer looks to her past as something holding her down but rather the platform on which she has built her success. The Bloom tour is a triumphant celebration of her fully realized self.
