40 days of art

16

Black Valley & TNT

Up until this point I had only released singles and mixtapes and one really rag-tag EP (Byte This). I was working with Amy Lombardo to help me figure out how to get various aspects of my professional and artistic career on track, and she really pushed me to make a polished album. 

My friend Claire, who is another weirdo rapper from Brooklyn (formerly of Hand Job Academy) was on this site called Looper Man and she found KEISHH’s music. She shared it with me and immediately emailed her and asked if she wanted to produce my new album. She lived in Baltimore at the time, so I got a bus ticket and we met at her parent’s house. We instantly hit it off and worked on some absolute bangers together. KEISHH is one of the sweetest, chillest, most creative people and I am so glad I have the opportunity to work with her.

The whole theme of Black Valley was to make it like a riot girl punk type album. The title came from Chase’s (my photo mentors) nickname for me because I have a slight (or heavy) valley girl accent. This was the first album, so I wanted to make a super slick music video to promote it. I reached out to April Maxey about shooting it (I really liked her work on Hand Job Academy’s videos) and she said she would if she could co-direct, and that started our long collaboration relationship. 

I wrote a song called TNT about exploding when people objectify me, and I thought it would be a great concept to explore the female gaze and what that would look like, since so many rap videos are shot via the male gaze. I got a bunch of really hot male actors to take off their shirts — for hot guys they were all total sweethearts!