Tommy Genesis, Vancouver-born rapper and visual artist, came back with a banger titled ‘Empty’ under her new label Downtown Records, and it’s as angsty and unhinged as ever.
Tommy started with the album ‘World Vision’ under Awful Records, signed by Atlanta’s king of the underground, Father after gaining traction on Soundcloud. From lines like “They trynna execute my vision / I’m just executing my vision” to “I’m distressed / I’m in an infinite regress”, Tommy’s sound is dripping with complete disregard for authority and a raw, uncensored, unfiltered voice for a great portion of the children of the internet generation.
When asked about where she drew her inspiration from on irl Magazine, she replied:
Anywhere and everywhere. The internet, my dreams, girls I don’t know, girls I do.
Once again, Tommy’s attitude spoke to me as a fellow (humble) artist and creator because it is unimaginable the inspiration one brought up in this time can draw from the internet. The internet has been revolutionary in terms of accessibility but also, imagination and pushing one’s creative, or personal, limits for that matter.
Being part Tamil and part Swedish, Tommy made me think of an idiom the one and only Halsey once used in an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 radio about her own mixed upbringing and that is: “to fall between two stools”, as in to fit neither of two categories and, hence, be neglected or fail. This resonated with me because as a Moroccan, raised in the Middle East, currently residing in Europe, I’ve always been waiting for the identity crisis to hit. And to be completely honest, it has, when it came to lacking fluency in my alleged native tongue of Arabic or identifying more with a more “Westernized” outlook in terms of pop culture or sense of humor, but to see successful women, such as Tommy, navigate that in the spotlight while being true to themselves in isolation from their “cultural identity” is empowering and liberating and allows me to think further beyond the constraints of identity, because there are none.
Feel free to listen to Tommy’s music down below and continue to show support for women breaking out into the mainstream with their unrefined and unrestrained selves while encouraging and reminding both yourselves and the individuals around you to be their authentic selves. It’ll get you far.
