‘Y’all really thought a bitch couldn’t rap, huh?” Noname winks conspiratorially. She’s less than a minute into Self, the first track from her debut album, and Glasgow’s sold-out crowd roars in appreciation. But Noname’s punchlines always hit twice: “Nah, actually this is for me.”
Her evasive moniker has been a symbolic, protective shield for Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner. She self-financed last year’s Room 25 LP with the proceeds from touring her beloved 2016 mixtape Telefone, and both records speak to a slippery sense of identity in an overwhelming, unjust world.
On stage, though, she is radiant and commanding, bouncing in her Converse. Telefone’s Diddy Bop receives an ear-splitting hero’s welcome, as does latest single Song 31 – so much so that she stages an intervention: “Only scream when I’m rapping! When I speak, you listen.”
Her conversational mode is set to fast-forward; words tumble from her mouth as if they’ve been waiting fully formed on the tip of her tongue. She rolls a captive audience through jokey asides and searing social commentary, and finds poetry and politics in the spaces in between. A beaming five-piece band illustrates her world with lush, sweeping neo-soul, and a neon-pink and electric-green Room 25 sign seems to transform SWG3 into the city’s most exclusive members’ club – extreme competition for tickets already bumped up the show from a far smaller venue.
Noname first tested her strength at Chicago’s open mic nights before a guest spot on Chance the Rapper’s 2013 Acid Rap mixtape became a star-maker. Now a heavyweight in the city’s effusive rap scene, she brings its richness and uniquely breezy cadence to life here. She offers a shortened run of ACE, a track with Chicago allies Smino and Saba, and an adoring crowd fills in their vocals. An extended cut of sunny sex jam Montego Bay leads first into her verse on Smino’s Amphetamine and then into Window, a complex ex-shaming ballad that uses tongue-twisters to tip from a pastiche of romance into an avowal of strength. She crouches low, tiptoes on the very edge of the stage. “Look at me,” she says, unblinking, and the whole room is transfixed.
