Noname’s fans consider her this generation’s “woke” female rapper, but it’s a notion that Noname herself rejects. In a recent interview with The Fader, the Chicago rapper otherwise known as Fatimah Warner insists that her music shouldn’t be pigeonholed as “real hip-hop” (shorthand for old-school rap, usually invoked by the same people who think the four elements represent the only true hip-hop culture). “A lot of my fans . . . I think they like me because they think I’m the anti-Cardi B,” she says. “I’m not. I’m just Fatimah.” And with her debut album, the brand-new Room 25 (2016’s Telefone was technically a mixtape), Noname achieves a healthy balance between the serious outlook of the conscious poet-rapper her fans have come to know and the sillier, funnier facets of her personality.
Primarily produced by Phoelix, the instrumentals on Room 25 impeccably blend jazz, soul, hip-hop, and funk. Noname chose to work with a modest group of good friends for the album, which includes a number of other Chicago natives such as R&B singer Ravyn Lenae and rapper Yaw. And while Noname is more extroverted on this new album than we’ve ever seen her, she still manages to maintain the intimacy she achieved with Telefone.
