Voguing—at least, the style now called “old way”—was popularized through performances by gay men, like those immortalized in Madonna’s 1990 video. Vogue fem, the style predominant today, could only have been created by trans women (known as “fem queens” in ballroom, the primarily Black and Latino scene where voguing emerged). This style of dance blends fastidiously feminine gestures with dramatic storytelling and bold, athletic feats. Ms. Boogie, an Afro-Latina rapper from Brooklyn who came up in the ballroom scene, similarly fuses softness with drama on The Breakdown, wielding the unflinching honesty of Brooklyn drill to depict a life that’s uniquely her own, yet intimately familiar to other trans women.
Ms. Boogie performed for years under a different name, releasing a debut album in 2014 and rising from the U.S. warehouse circuit to European tours. After publicly announcing her transition in 2018, she began brazenly breaking down her new reality on 2020 single “Fem Queen” featuring Trannilish (“Niggas love chicks with a dick/DMs just to prove it”) and rapping about the medicinal power of getting railed on 2021’s “Dickscipline.” Since then, she’s leveled up her operation—the new album launched with a slickly choreographed video—while the themes of her work have grown more complex. On The Breakdown, she meditates on success with a mixture of pride and ambivalence, backed by moody, muted production that lets her storytelling shine.
Most Brooklyn drill rappers are men, often recounting stories about dope dealing and violence. Ms. Boogie instead divulges the oft-unseen realities of sex work and dating DL (“down-low”) trans-attracted men. “I’m the plug and the drug,” she raps. “Streets is watching,” so she sends her man a black car and asks him to sign an NDA. Such tight-lipped business leaves little room for play: “I don’t need new friends/It’s a cold world, I need new Timbs,” go the bars on “Come Again,” a song whose braggadocious hook (like early-aughts Eve filtered through a codeine blunt) makes one long for more such catchy moments. But Ms. Boogie’s tale calls for a different sound.
Most of the album was produced by Minneapolis’s Boo Boo, aka M Jamison, who leverages her experience scoring films. The Breakdown’s melancholy synths and dreamy strings sound like rolling through dark city streets in the rain, somewhere between Blade Runner and the symphonic grit of Mos Def’s “Auditorium.” Producer El Joven leaves metallic fingerprints on “H20” and “Build Me Up,” whose funky beats echo the confrontational sound of New York’s queer underground. Ahya Simone’s harp weaves airy grace throughout the album, most gloriously on the closing track. (Jamison and Simone are also Black trans women; nearly every hand that touched the record, including its mixing engineer, belongs to a queer or trans person of color.)
On “Dazed & Confused,” the elevator climbs to the 47th floor en route to “Hustler,” a ballad made theatrical by Samir Robinson’s violin. Its narrator surveys her queendom and reflects on the life of Barbie, a departed ballroom niece. Then the clock strikes 2, the song breaks down, and the narrator leaves to meet her second client of the night. This arc is the album’s centerpiece, typifying its sound and message: A trans woman can triumph, and the high life might look glamorous, but her community remains in peril, and the hustle never stops.
With the exception of Cassius Cruz’s indispensable singing on “Hustler,” Ms. Boogie tends to outshine the album’s other vocalists. No verse hits like Trannilish’s on “Fem Queen,” and if “Come Again” is peak Eve, then it’s missing a Gwen. Many songs have similar vibes and structures; El Joven’s most seductive rhythmic experiments are relegated to the closing seconds of two later tracks. The focus is always on Ms. Boogie and her story, which she centers unapologetically. Oscillating between the DL and the deeply candid, she channels the bruised inner voice of someone who’s built a tough, if beautiful, exterior to survive. Rap need not be girly to be feminine, and on The Breakdown, Ms. Boogie takes off her mask without letting down her guard.
