‘She’s a shadow walker, moon stalker, Black author, librarian, contrarian.” Noname’s second album starts with this act of self-definition, and it’s a decent summing up of an astonishing rapper whose erudition and political acumen is charged up by her sense of wonder. Initially a performance poet, she emerged last decade alongside Chicago peers such as Chance the Rapper, Saba and Smino, all making creative, neo soul-inflected hip-hop in parallel to the city’s drill rap and jazz scenes. Her debut 2016 mixtape Telefone was a poignant study of family and community, its romances and character studies menaced by police brutality and generational trauma.
