Princess Nokia is good-news in the rap music industry, a very talented music artist and an intersectional feminist who takes on the rap brotherhood. (Or, better say sisterhood?!)
So, let’s find out more about her early life, personality and music career.
1. Princess Nokia is an American rapper, songwriter and actress.
2. Though she is better known by her stage name (Princess Nokia), her real name is Destiny Nicole Frasqueri.
3. She was born on 14 June, 1992, in New York City.
5. Princess Nokia’s music has always been experimental, eagerly floating between genres such as hip hop, emo rap, soul, rock, Electro hop and house.
5. Princess Nokia is an extremely talented, modern female artist and a radical intersectional feminist who is taking on the rap brotherhood. (Sisterhood, HERE WE COME <3)
6. Through her music and public figure, she raises issues about gentrification, male domination, her love of riot grrrl and of course, why the music industry is like the devil (more infos below).
7. Αs she has specifically said in an interview for Guardian: “At my shows, girls can take up space the way men do”.
8. As far as her debut released album is concerned, that was Metallic Butterfly in 2014, followed by the 2015 mixtape, Honeysuckle (as Destiny).
9. Frasqueri, as Princess Nokia, then released the 1992 EP, followed by her debut album, 1992 Deluxe, which served as her breakthrough album.
10. In 2018, she released the emo-rap mixtape, A Girl Cried Red, before releasing two albums in 2020, Everything Sucks and Everything Is Beautiful.
11. Princess Nokia has also hosted an Apple Music radio show and acted in the independent film Angelfish.
12. At the age of 10, the rapper lost her mother to AIDS, so between the ages of 9 and 16, Nokia was in foster care.
13. During her time in foster care, her foster mother was physically abusive.
14. It was only two years since she had run away from the abusive foster home in East Harlem, with “three dollars in my pocket and 75% on my cell phone battery” for a life on the streets, as she subsequently told the makers of the 2016 documentary Destiny.
15. As she has said in a Guardian’s interview about that stage in her life: “I still think: what the fuck was I doing? I couldn’t understand why people were glorifying me when I wasn’t that talented; there was no substance or merit in what I was doing. I couldn’t let myself get away with that. And there was a lot of male dominance surrounding me, wanting to be a fly in my ear and dictate or surmise what I was going to be doing.”
16. In the same interview, she expressed her honest point of view on the music industry, saying (sarcastically) that: “To me, the music industry doesn’t exist” (she laughs here!). “Ιt’s like the devil, it doesn’t exist if you don’t believe in it”.
14. After Princess Nokia left foster care, she went to live with her grandmother, and at the age of 16, she has already started writing rhymes.
15. At that time, Frasqueri lived around East Harlem and the Lower East Side of New York City.
16. As for Princess Nokia’s musical background, we have to admit it’s fascinating!
17. Her parents were hip-hop fans, but she was exposed to heavy metal aged six, courtesy of a goth babysitter.
18. As she revealed in the same interview for her babysitter and her musical influences generally: “She was the coolest person to be near. I’d watch her chain-smoke and listen to Rob Zombie and make out in front of me and it was scandalous and I loved it. I grew up in a liberal home where we all loved all types of music and my uncles listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers; rock wasn’t considered some white-boy shit. But her specifically, I saw and I was really drawn to. It was radical, it was fun, it was aggressive, and it had a tone that matched my heart.”
19. She recorded her first song, “Destiny”, in 2010, and released it under the name “Wavy Spice” on her SoundCloud page and her YouTube channel in mid-2012.
20. Τhe song was largely autobiographical and gained modest popularity.
21. Subsequently, she released her second track, “Bitch I’m Posh”, which went viral, and as of March 2020, it received 170,000 plays on SoundCloud.
22. Then, Princess Nokia released YAYA (Yaya is a Taino word) as a commentary of perceptions of colonial history.
23. She continued to release singles, such as Dragons, a Game of Thrones inspired piece, Honeysuckle, and Vicki Gotti until changing their moniker to Princess Nokia.
24. She also released her mixtape, 1992, on Soundcloud and began touring.
25. As the rapper claims, “Princess Nokia” is an alter ego, which she introduced with the track “Nokia”.
26. Frasqueri released an album named Metallic Butterfly on May 12, 2014, and was debuted on Vice and Soundcloud.
27. In February 2017, Frasqueri confronted a member of the audience at a charity concert at Cambridge University whom she accused of “mouthing dirty obscenities like ‘show me your tits’.”
28. The alleged harasser denied yelling such obscenities and told The Cambridge Student: “I was standing in the audience and was told by a fellow audience member that the name of the performer was ‘Abigail’. Given that I was enjoying the performance, I shouted out ‘Let’s go Abigail!’. After I shouted this, she came down from the stage. She slapped me and threw drinks on me.” After returning to the stage, Nokia told the crowd “that’s what you do when a White boy disrespects you”.
29. On September 8, 2017, Princess Nokia released her debut studio album, 1992 Deluxe, which was an expanded version of their 2016 mixtape, 1992.
30. 1992 Deluxe peaked at #25 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers Albums chart.
31. In addition to that, New Musical Express (NME) listed the album as the 32nd best album of 2017.
32. In October 2017, Frasqueri made headlines again when a viral video surfaced of her, throwing hot soup in a man’s face whilst on a subway journey to Brooklyn.
33. The rapper heard a white man shouting racial slurs at a group of teenagers, and decided to take action against the racist remarks by slapping the man and throwing their hot soup on him. Then, she took to Twitter saying: “this bigot called this group of teenage boys ‘n****s’ on the train so I stood up and slapped him and everybody on the train backed me up”.
34. On February 18, 2018, Nokia also debuted a new radio show on Apple’s Beats 1 Radio. The episodes aired everySunday and allow listeners to get acquainted with the inner workings of Nokia’s mind.
35. She has a total of 6 episodes labelled: “The Voices in My Head with Princess Nokia.”
36. In September 2018, Nokia was chosen as one of the six ambassadors by Maison Margiela to promote their new fragrance, Mutiny.
37. In December 2018, Nokia re-released the album Metallic Butterfly under the label Rough Trade.
38. In 2019, she had her debut performance as an actress in the indie movie “Angelfish”.
39. In February 2020, Nokia released two albums: Everything Sucks and Everything is Beautiful.
40. Princess Nokia is a strong supporter of intersectional feminism, founding the Smart Girl Club with Milah Libin, a podcast where she discusses healthy living and urban feminism.
41. The rapper is also an active practictioner of Santería, and has shared her own experience with clairvoyance and spirituality through her music.
42. As NOKIA has stated in past interviews, she identifies as bisexual and has also talked about how growing up near the queer community of New York City, was an important part of her life.
43. The early stages of Princess Nokia’s musical career began through performing at gay clubs, as she gained popularity among the gay nightlife scene.
44.She has also opened up about her identity as a gender non-conforming person and uses both pronouns.
45. Princess Nokia is a free spirit on her chilled out performance of ‘Gemini’, lifted off her record ‘Everything Is Beautiful’. So, like many other artists from the globe, she joined “Α COLOR SHOW”, singing the track “GEMINI”.
46. Princess Nokia’s studio albums are: Metallic Butterfly (2014, in 2018 was released a deluxe edition), 1992 Deluxe (2017, as a deluxe edition of their EP of the same title), Everything Sucks (2020) and Everything is Beautiful (2020).
47. Her EPs are 1992 (2016) and G.O.A.T. (2017) and her mixtapes are Honeysuckle (2015, as Destiny) and A Girl Cried Red (2018).
48. Her guest appearances are: Ratking – “Puerto Rican Judo” from So It Goes (2014), Mykki Blanco – “Wish You Would” from Spring/Summer 2014 (2014), Ratking – “Steep Tech” from 700-Fill (2015), K. Michelle – “Outro” from Kimberly: The People I Used to Know (2017), Show Me the Body – “Spit” from Corpus I (2017), Josh Forehead – “Fanta” from Summer 2014 (2017) and Silverstein – “Madness” from A Beautiful Place to Drown (2020).
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