Princess Nokia – “Practice” & “Green Eggs & Ham”

Princess Nokia – “Practice” & “Green Eggs & Ham”

The New York rap snarler and fearsome subway soup-wielder Princess Nokia has been a complicated, fascinating voice for as long as she’s been in the public eye. Nokia’s last full-length, for instance, was the straight-up emo move A Girl Cried Red. And today, as The FADER reports, Nokia is now planning to release two different albums that will showcase two different sides of her personality — that old T.I. Vs. T.I.P./I Am… Sasha Fierce move. Those two albums are entitled Everything Sucks and Everything Is Beautiful, and they’ll both be out later this week.

According to The FADER, Everything Sucks was recorded over a single week in New York, and it looks like it’ll represent Nokia’s harder, more sneery side. On the two-minute lead single “Practice,” Nokia flexes hard over a minimal piano-and-drums beat from producer Tony Seltzer, bragging that she “brought punk to hip-hop” and “weird to the block” and that she played Coachella without a major deal. It’s good shit.

Meanwhile, Nokia made Everything Is Beautiful with live instrumentation, and a press release calls it “a representation of the sensitive, feminine side” of her persona. Lead single “Green Eggs & Ham,” another two-minute song, is warm, bubbly melodic funk with serious Chance The Rapper/Lizzo vibes. I like “Practice” better, but that might say more about me than it does about either song. Check out both tracks below.

The self-released Everything Sucks and Everything Is Beautiful are both due for release 2/26 — this coming Wednesday.

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