Noname may reside on the holy texts/Yellow Pages facet of the valley, however she’s finally in her personal zone, rapping with breezy conversationality, even when her lyrics really feel as in the event that they could possibly be measured in metric tons. The latent pleasure in her music radiates from the friction of creating sophisticated truths sound easy — one thing you may hear loud and clear on the Chicago-raised rapper’s deeply self-possessed new album, “Sundial,” however even louder and clearer when she’s verbalizing her reality onstage.
On the Fillmore Silver Spring on Monday evening, her set checklist included all 11 cuts from “Sundial,” and she or he delivered every of them with out the assistance of any prerecorded backing vocals. As a substitute, flanked by a five-piece band — keys, bass, drums, two singers — the 32-year-old rapper exuded a singular confidence, refusing to plead, preach or scold, solely stepping out of her coolest inside voice throughout the hook of “Oblivion” to declare, “When the world blow up, that’s it!” It felt like essentially the most cleareyed apocalypse track since Solar Ra’s “Nuclear War.”
As simple as her music sounds, Noname says “Sundial” is sophisticated. “The album is actually only a have a look at Blackness, Black tradition, our group, and the way we’ve contributed [to causing harm] in some methods,” she told Pitchfork final month, “and the way typically it’s uncomfortable to have that dialog.” But, in track, she by no means appears to flinch. On Monday evening, throughout “Namesake,” she delivered dazzling rhymes with chitchat nonchalance: “Cry me a river, you would cry me a metaphor/ A megaphone screaming out/ Dream about revolution, air air pollution/ Similar answer: socialism.”
After making her politics plain within the first verse, Noname silenced her band and proceeded to place numerous pop stars on blast for performing on the Tremendous Bowl: “Go, Rihanna, go/ Watch the fighter jet fly excessive/ Conflict machine will get glamorized/ We play the sport to move the time.” Then, after swapping Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé into the chorus, she pointed at herself for accepting an invite to play Coachella earlier this yr: “I mentioned I wouldn’t carry out for them/ And someway I nonetheless fell in line.” (One among many causes Coachella is ugly: Philip Anschutz, proprietor of the pageant’s guardian firm, has a historical past of donating money to teams with anti-LGBTQ+ ties.)
However finally, it was the improvised finale of “Namesake” that made for essentially the most contemplative second of the evening, with Noname reworking a basic call-and-response routine right into a wild riddle. “What’s my title?” she requested the group, her syllables locked to the rhythm. When lots of of voices shouted “Noname,” it felt like a cosmic joke, a philosophical repartee, a communal ego-death ritual and, someway, a celebration.
