force of nature

With a new album forthcoming, hip-hop powerhouse Princess Nokia explains why living in multiple dimensions is paramount to her existence on Earth

- JHONI JACKSON

“Every day I feel different. Every day it’s either masc or femme or in between. Every day is goth or bohemian,” Princess Nokia tells me. “When I wake up and feel an energy, I coexist with it.”

The performer, born Destiny Frasqueri, is fluid in more ways than one. “I’m a gender-nonconforming androgynous person,” she says. “But some people are like, ‘What happened to your tomboy phase?’ ”

That question is a reference to Frasqueri’s breakthrough 2017 single “Tomboy,” off the album 1992 Deluxe. The song’s music video sees her on a basketball court in an oversized T-shirt pulled over a sweatshirt. She later raps about her “little titties” and later raps about her “little titties” and “phat belly.” Those who inquire about her lost era of tomboyishness seem not to realize that Frasqueri’s presentation will never be absolute and thus defies tidy categorization.

In a culture that encourages us to divide — by religion, economics, race, age, sexuality, the list never ends — the multihyphenate Princess Nokia persona sets out to represent the complexity of women, artists, and human beings. She’s a lover and a fighter. She’s a rapper and a singer. She’s masculine and feminine. She’s a pragmatist and a dreamer. And no matter the haters, Frasqueri is unstoppable.

“It’s so much easier to understand artistic men,” Frasqueri remarks. “But women — especially brown women we think they have psychological issues.”