Noname - Room 25 [2018]

Years after a stellar feature (Chance the Rapper - "Lost") put her on the radar of many hip-hop fans, Fatima Warner, who raps as Noname, dropped a phenomenal debut project. Telefone featured the Chicago wordsmith delving into innocence, love, youth, and frequently, death. The mixtape was blessed with beautiful hooks, courtesy of other Chi-Town based artists such as Cam O'bi and Ravyn Lenae, and extremely well produced beats with influences from jazz, neo-soul and gospel, but Noname herself was always the highlight. Her intricately constructed and thoughtful lyrics, delivered with a beat-poetry-like flow that fits her soft voice perfectly, made Telefone a standout project of 2016. 

Noname - Telefone [2016]

In a by-gone era, when visiting the ridiculously big (and now non-existent) Virgin record store in Manhattan was one of the highlights of my life as a young music enthusiast, the first thing that would have drawn me to Telefone would have been the cover. Like many great album covers, the art that accompanies the mixtape makes a statement without words, a statement that, more or less, lets the observer know what the content of this project will be. It's a simple, but powerful image: a young black girl, with flowers in her hand and a skull on her head. She is young, innocent, but weighed down by death - mourning. Telefone is a mixtape that deals with innocence, youth and growth. However, the most interesting - and at times heartbreaking - aspect about Noname's debut is how she juxtaposes the innocence, sonically and lyrically, with the harsh reality, which comes in the form of racism, police brutality and loss.