Since she first debuted as Wavy Spice, Princess Nokia has proved she’s a musical chameleon, and her latest transformation is putting everyone in their feelings. The Nuyorican rapper unveiled her emo-inspired mixtape A Girl Cried Red today, after teasing the project a few months ago.
Back in February, Princess Nokia told Beats 1’s Ebro that the inspiration for the tape came from growing up on emo and pop punk in New York, and the importance those genres had in black and brown communities. “I think that the majority of all the goth kids, punk kids, ravers, emo kids, scene kids – the whole hardcore scene that existed in New York City – was all the kids in the hood, which is really beautiful, because you have all of these hood-ass kids going to shows, dressing in bondage clothes, dressing in those ways, in those aesthetics…That shows that brown kids – they carry emotion, they carry pain, they carry oppression and strife. And they carry so much that that music was an escapism,” she said.
Inspired by some of her favorite bands from the era, like blink-182 and Paramore, the tape is making everyone relive their emo kid days (warning: a trip to Hot Topic is definitely in your future).
Check out our favorite reactions below, and stream the mixtape via Spotify or Apple Music.