Princess Nokia - Tomboy, 2016.

I haven’t met a nerdy brown music girl whose life Princess Nokia hasn’t changed.

5 years ago, fresh outta high school & bored out of my brain, I stumbled across this fierce MC called Princess Nokia. She looked like me, wore baggy clothes like me, proudly showed her eczema tinged arms (LIKE ME?), rapped about Bart Simpson (I LOVE the Simpsons?) and walked through the streets of her borough with her friends in such a cheeky no fucks given kinda way.

I could write a lot about the song alone – this song gave me confidence to get my tum out (hashtag my little titties and my fat belly), it nods to Missy Elliot’s CLASSIC Can’t Stand The Rain, and even shouts out Blues Clues.

Seriously - shout out Blues mf Clues.

Watching this music video also inspired me to go on a deep YouTube crawl of every Princess Nokia video I could possibly find. And among those, I saw this:

8:23 is the magic moment (for me) - watch the whole thing though.

“So I like to say at all these patriarchal male-dominated events:

All the motherfucking girls to the fucking front.”

It was the first time I’d personally seen an artist take the time to make sure the femmes In the room felt comfortable enough to take up space & get to the front.

I can’t even COUNT how many times a tall white dude has stood comfortably in front of me & blocked my view – while lil 5’3 me tried SO hard to jump high enough to catch a glimpse of Vera Blue singing Lady Powers (the irony isn’t lost on me). 

And so now, as a DJ, wherever I can I try to make spaces a little safer – for mob, for fellow POC folk, for folks living with disabilities, for our gorgeous femmes and trans folk and queer community - I’ll hop on the mic and invite them to come front and centre.

White men can stay too - but on the condition they shake some ass first hahahahaha.

But I do this BECAUSE of Ms Destiny herself, the Gemini Queen.

And this song. And the YouTube spiral it led me on.

I can’t even begin to imagine just how many brown girls’ lives she’s changed, just by being authentically Destiny.