“She dream in techni-color
Live black and white
Opportunity knockin’
A nigga just got her nails done
Skeletons in my closet gone open the door when Yale come
They ain’t gonna wanna see my silhouette rap
He’s fucking cognac
My smile in all black”

Noname

Background:

      Fatimah Warner, also known as Noname, grew up in Bronzeville, Chicago with her grandparents until her first year of high school.  Up until this point her mother had been mostly absent throughout her life, an adjacent, rather than central, force in her childhood. Thus by the time she rejoined her mother, their relationship was fractured. Regardless, The public doesn’t know the names of her mother, brother, or grandparents. Warner is thus very private, which makes telefone, a very personal and vulnerable album, all the more notable.

        By high school, Warner joined a writing program at her local library. Through it, she developed the creative and poetic writing skills that would carry her lyrics into today. This is also where her interest in slam poetry and rap began. As she grew,Warner partook in many contests for both, and in the process, met other Chicago artists like Chance the Rapper and Saba. With them, she self-produced and promoted her first album Telefone in 2016. Since then it has been praised by critics like Rollingstone and Stereogum for its poignance and thought provoking nature.

Noname: The Impact of a Name

      Originally named “Noname Gypsy,” Warner changed it due to racial controversy. However, before she was aware of the racial implications, she liked the name because it reminded her of a drifting or nomadic lifestyle. However, even with the name change Warner keeps to the original spirit of her idea by continuously challenging the paradigm of linear success. The idea that the road to success is a clear straight line. Instead she proposes that success comes with periods of complacency and stagnancy. That you can have set backs and insecurity, but so long as you keep your goal in mind you’re still on the right path. Her stage name forces her to both acknowledge and move past those insecurities and be open to a future in which she alone can define her narrative.

     Throughout Reality Check,  Warner is telling a narrative of black femme pain in Chicago, like the flip side to Chance or Saba, her contemporaries. To do this, she explores both her own personal narrative as well as the narratives of those who came before her and gave her the opportunity to write today. However, for every story she tells, she questions herself, wondering whether she is the most qualified or the “right” person to give life to these stories.  She describes herself as a “Mississippi vagabond” whose “granny gone turn up in her grave/ saying my granny really was a slave for this?/ all your incomplete smilies and pages ripped/ you know they whipped us / how you afraid to rap it?” This is her perception of herself, not her grandmothers.  Warner knows this, yet she still feels the weight and frustration of not representing her ancestors’ stories “fully”.  She also feels like her frustration isn’t valid because she is in “heaven” in comparison to her ancestors.

      Running parallel to lines about insecurity is a chorus saying “don’t fear the light that dwells deep within/ you are powerful beyond what you imagine/ just let your light glow” That chorus is her grandmother that supported her, her ancestors waiting for their stories to be told.

Telefone is vulnerable because Warner isn’t hiding or shaming her insecurity about the future. She doesn’t know whether she’s qualified, she doesn’t know that she will succeed. However, she is unwilling to pass up the opportunities given to her. In “Reality Check,” she is saying that you can’t trap yourself in a box just because it’s comfortable; you have to take that scary leap of faith in order to reach your dreams.

 

“And when that call comes
(You better say hello)….”