Culture | the porch | Keyona Smith
When Erin Williams picks up the phone, it sounds like she could be in the middle of a workout. She explains that the reason she sounds so winded is because what was intended to be a normal day walking her dog and getting fresh air, is actually her being dragged all through the Brooklyn, New York streets.
Right before the interview begins, a breathless Williams cautions her dog, Roxanane, “Back up out the street!” She explains that Roxanne, who is named after one of hip-hop’s female vanguards, is a mix between pitbull and bulldog. The namesake is a clear indication of how much influence female hip-hop has on the Lion Kueen.
She grabs the mic and steps foot on the RaleighWRLD festival stage, instantly establishing a connection with the crowd bonded by the booms, baps and the frequencies of hip-hop. She introduced herself as Lion Kueen while making earnest eye contact with the audience and proceeded to keep everyone captivated as she spit bars with depth and meaning that could not be ignored. With her confidence becoming more and more clear with every rhyme and flow she spit, the crowd began to bop their heads eagerly so when she instructed everyone to repeat after her–word for word–that’s exactly what they did.
With a name like Lion Kueen, I go straight into asking about the meaning bef=hind her fierce moniker. “The Lion King is one of my favorite movies,” she said. “The story of leaving home at a young age and having to find yourself resonated so I stuck with it.”
She reveals that her journey began on one of the lunch tables of her high school in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Although her first freestyle was five years prior, she didn’t start trusting herself until 2014.
For Kueen, clowning around and making people laugh came naturally. Surrounded by her classmates when some students would beatbox, she transformed her jokes into raps. Her status as an emcee that could freestyle stuck with her from the cafeteria tables to cookouts where her family continued to stoke her fire by encouraging her to perform for them.
“I would say the people that were around me really supported what I was good at,” she said. “They’d remind me and say, ‘you’re good at this, you can make it and you can do whatever you want with it.”
A Creeping Fire Burns
Although Kueen’s artistic flame had been lit and kept ablaze by a supportive tribe of family and friends, she spent a few years off the beaten path. To rebel, discover and pivot.
Kueen: I left home at a young age because of my preferences and who I love. I was like 16 or 17 and I was an outsider. Me and my homies were like outsiders, we lived together, we had a crib and just crashed on couches. We were trying to figure it out.
In 2009, I was still in my very early 20s, I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do, I was just very rebellious, partying, staying out late and music was always that thing that I was great at but at that time I wasn’t serious.
I’d recorded my first freestyle, it was kind of on the backburner because I was just living life. I wasn’t focused on a career, I didn’t know what I wanted out of life.
Around 2010-’11, I started to think bigger. I started to think, do I really wanna work a job for the rest of my life? I was working at a call center in Greenville and I didn’t want to do that, I didn’t like it. I can do better and I can do something else with my life and there was music, it kept hitting me in the face like hello, this is what you’re supposed to be doing.
Sometimes we’re swimming against the current when we don’t do what we’re supposed to do and when we don’t do what God sent us here to do, we make life harder for us. Around that time, that’s what I was doing and God already had a plan. Once I figured out that if I just followed God’s plan, my life would be a lot easier.
Alchemy: During your performance at RaleighWrld Fest, you mentioned names like Lola Brooke and Rhapsody, where else do you draw inspiration for the way that you tell your stories in your raps?
Kueen: Growing up, my sister graduated in ‘93 and my parents are older so I had a melting point of musical influence from soul, and jazz, to hip hop and R&B. She listened to a lot of Lauryn Hill, so Miseducation from front to back, I knew as a kid. Lauryn Hill was the first female emcee that really I could tell you the words she rapped, even if I didn’t know what she was talking about. And Missy Elliott, 702, Total, and Aaliyah. I grew up in that era and I mentioned 106 & Park, AJ, and Free.
I try to relate to people who can relate to me and what they know and what they’re familiar with. Missy Elliott’s style when it comes to songwriting, melodies, and Aaliyah. They were a heavy influence on me. I didn’t even realize that until I started doing more singing instead of just rapping and you naturally go off of what you know and what you grew up listening to. You don’t have to bite style but pay homage to the people who helped to mold you into who you are now as an artist. Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Rah Digga, I love Left Eye, Da Brat, these women just–the confidence they had and the way they rocked the stage in a genre that’s mainly men and did it with confidence and stood their ground.
That’s something I love seeing women do because we are often looked at as we have to be something that we’re not but we can rock the stage just like anybody else.
Alchemy: You have a project that you just dropped, Friday, Tales of Gotham, what can listeners expect to take away from it?
Kueen: Tales of Gotham is really just a representation of my story from North Carolina to New York. It represents the transition of life, trying to figure things out, the moments where you feel you have it figured out, what it feels like to try to make it happen in another city and another environment. New York is one of the biggest cities in the world, so for me to come from Rocky Mount, a small town in North Carolina to the big city was a big jump for me but sometimes you have to trust God’s plan and take that leap of faith to be able to put yourself in the right position so you can pursue whatever dream you want.
New York was that big leap for me and sometimes when you take those big leaps there’s trial and error, there’s pros and cons, you might fall but you have to get back up, learn from the experience of the things that test you. This album talks about that. It’s a reflection of what I feel like North Carolina and New York put together. It’s a reflection of NY culture, the streets, the sirens, the noise, people talking, the life of the city, people showing love. After I perform on the train, people show so much love. Sometimes now I step out and they yell, Lion Kueen what’s up!
Just an experience and it’s for people who don’t know my story. It’s about what it was like living here in New York because some people may just know me from North Carolina or wherever they met me from.
This is like my Good Kid Mad City, it’s interludes on this project, there’s an outro, it feels like a movie.
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