Destiny Frasqueri, better known as the Afro-Nuyorican rapper Princess Nokia, has spent the past five years searching for her sound. In 2016, she released a nine-track mixtape called 1992, named for her birth year and the era when her native New York City held a gritty dominance over hip-hop. She has always been a rapper with her shoe on the throat of her doubters, but 1992 was decidedly tougher than 2014’s club music-laden Metallic Butterfly and the mélange of disco, funk, hip-hop, and Corinne Bailey Rae-style pop that makes up her 2015 project Honeysuckle, which she released as Destiny. For those who have been following Frasqueri since her 2012 track “Bitch, I’m Posh”—released under the moniker Wavy Spice—then perhaps 1992 is a shock. It’s a large leap from the posing-primed, vogue ball-inspired “Posh” to her recent rugged sound. But for the 25-year-old rapper, the tape was a realization and release of a lot that has been bubbling inside of her. On a broadcast of her internet radio show Smart Girl Club, she declared, “1992 freed my soul.”
Now with a reissue via Rough Trade that includes eight new tracks, the emotions of her autobiographical lyrics are even more palpable than before. She is open about her experiences in foster care, her coping mechanisms for feeling frightened and misunderstood, and the creative manifestations of abuse on new addition “Goth Kid”: “You make me sick, and all I was was just a kid/You picked a flaw in all I did and go and make me feel like shit... You have no clue to how I lived, in foster care, abused as kids… I was sleeping in the cemetery/Kind of cute, a little scary.” There is joy in skater brat anthem “Bart Simpson” and a wealth of pride for her gender-defiant style and “little titties and fat belly” on “Tomboy.” Describing that song’s video, Frasqueri says, “[It’s] me as Destiny in New York growing up in the city, being a skater, being a comic book head, being a rapper, and being a really androgynous kid.”
The sound of New York is occasionally absent on 1992—in moments, her Migos-like repetitive hooks and regionless hashtag punchlines move it somewhere a bit less rooted—but Frasqueri’s loved for the city never wanes. She sounds especially comfortable on the pulsating “Brujas,” which explores the Taíno and Yoruban mysticism brujería (or witchcraft) that she raps about her “Grandmas” practicing. On “Saggy Denim,” she and fellow NYC upstart Wiki head back in time to 1995 where one leg of Princess Nokia’s jeans are rolled up above her calf like LL Cool J used to do; she is jamming to Sublime’s 40oz. to Freedom, and getting high to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. She excels in these daydreams, but “ABCs of New York” is where she sounds most at home. The lyrical details are granular—she relishes eating bodega food on her mom’s couch and warns of the NYPD’s warrant squads. It is less NYC 101 and more like a native New York vernacular that harkens back to the work of artists such as Big L. Princess Nokia’s voice catches in the back of her throat and her delivery is reminiscent of Fort Greene rapper Paula Perry’s mini-hit “Extra, Extra” produced by DJ Premier.
These similarities square Princess Nokia’s first strictly-rap project right into New York’s remarkable hip-hop lineage, but they also highlight 1992’s primary deficiency: the tinny, crackerjack production throughout. How would Frasqueri sound over classic New York beats by producers like Primo, the Alchemist, or RZA? The most exciting rap coming out of the city at the current moment is by women like Cardi B and Young M.A. If Frasqueri can find more experienced collaborators, she has the ability to transcend DIY tapes and festivals for sturdier money-makers (if that’s even something she wants). Princess Nokia’s done anime cosplay and has taken inspiration from Civil Rights-era funk, and although she’s said 1992 is her most authentic self, she has a lot of time and space to really find her sound.
