Noname’s debut brims with resilience, defiance and wanderlust
“Cause when we walk into heaven, nobody’s name gon’ exist,” Noname raps on her self-released debut album, “Room 25.”
For the Los Angeles-via-Chicago rapper born Fatimah Warner 26 years ago, the moniker “Noname” is not an erasure of personality, but a widening of it. It embraces the notion that anything is possible, even as she declares that it may be impossible to truly know her, to pin her down.
On her acclaimed 2016 mixtape, “Telefone,” Noname established an intimate, intricate style of rapping first heard on key cameos for a number of better-known artists such as Chance the Rapper. The new recording finds the rapper in transition: a new city, new life, new possibilities. Her recent move to California brings a wide-screen perspective to the music.
“Windows” centers the album’s sense of resilience, defiance and wanderlust. “Quit looking out the window, go find yourself,” the chorus urges. Its mix of what sounds like a music-box melody and lush strings defines an album that evokes the neo-soul of the late ‘90s (Erykah Badu, D’Angelo) and the jazz-tipped hip-hop of the early ‘90s (A Tribe Called Quest, Guru, Gang Starr). The empathetic production by Chicago artist Phoelix blends jazzy accents, dusties soul and a relaxed, after-hours vibe that suits Noname’s voice.
She insinuates, slides and dances at low volume while blending puns, metaphors, jokes and sly asides with a dexterity that would be dizzying if it didn’t feel so relaxed. Talk about “flow” – she’s more like a gentle cascade into a river that ripples out into a dozen tributaries, so many ideas and layers that it’s impossible to follow all of them the first couple of times through a track. That she rewards repeated listens is a given. That’s she one of the finest MCs to emerge from Chicago in the last decade isn’t widely acknowledged yet, but it should be.
“Maybe this is the album you listen to in your car when you driving home late at night,” Noname muses at the outset, while casually dismissing her doubters. “Blaxploitation” evokes classic movie scores from the ‘70s as the MC eviscerates racial stereotyping: “Your mammy stay on the South Side, she paid to clean your house, power of Pine-Sol, baby.”
She employs her friends to balance the album, to lighten the tone, notably the Caribbean-flavored “Montego Bae” with singer Ravyn Lenae and the finger-snapping “Ace” with Smino and Saba. But the most resonant moments belong to Noname, particularly the scathing “Prayer Song” and the fragile mortality meditation “Don’t Forget About Me.” As self-effacing and understated as Noname can appear, the weight of her songs and words eventually can’t be denied.