One in all L.A.’s most promising younger musicians can hint her profession again to the second she determined to run away from residence.
Or did her mother kick her out?
“It’s onerous to elucidate,” Alemeda says.
Rising up in a strict Islamic family in Phoenix, Rahema Alameda — the singer modified the spelling of her stage identify to spice up her web searchability — was in fixed battle together with her mom over college, faith and the pop music she was all however forbidden from listening to as a child.
When she was 17, Alemeda recollects, “we bought into an enormous combat — stuff that had simply constructed up until that second — and I used to be like, ‘You recognize what? I’m leaving.’ Then she did this bizarre factor the place she known as the cops on me but in addition modified the locks and moved to Africa.” She laughs.
“I swore on the Quran that I used to be by no means coming again.”
In actual fact, Alemeda would later go a way towards repairing their relationship: On a current afternoon, she’s simply returned to L.A. from a go to together with her household in Arizona. However seven years after she left residence, she takes a philosophical view of her adolescent turmoil.
“If my mother didn’t deal with me the way in which she did, I wouldn’t have left,” says Alemeda, who’s now 25. “And if I’d by no means left, I might by no means have gotten signed.”
That signing was a cope with Prime Dawg Leisure, residence to the Grammy-winning likes of SZA and Doechii and the label that launched Kendrick Lamar to superstardom. Final week, TDE and Warner Information launched “However What the Hell Do I Know,” a killer seven-track EP by Alemeda that exhibits off a daring new voice in Gen Z pop.
Over the woozy guitars of “Shedding Myself,” she sings about disappearing right into a poisonous relationship — “I’m only a coronary heart in your arrow” — whereas “Joyful With You” contemplates her reflex for self-sabotage. In “Beat a B!tch Up,” Alemeda and Doechii commerce ride-or-die assurances in an explosive Warped Tour-style refrain.
“However What the Hell Do I Know” is humorous and biting and loaded with hooks. But the EP closes with a gut-punch of a ballad, “I’m Over It,” about shedding somebody to dependancy. “Kicked again, laughing in a Camry / Speaking ’bout how we hate our households,” Alemeda sings, her voice trembling with emotion, earlier than she spools ahead to extra painful recollections: “I held your hair, I flushed your medicine / You took the love, I took the hit.”
The track, which in its dramatic precision ranks up there with stuff by Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, is a serious emotional achievement for Alemeda, who was “very nonchalant about music at first,” she says at TDE’s headquarters in Studio Metropolis. She’s carrying low-rise denims and a paisley-print high and sips an espresso after the six-hour drive from Phoenix.
“I used to be simply making an attempt to flee my family,” she provides. “However I feel I’ve healed rather a lot by means of writing about all of the issues I went by means of.”
Although TDE made its identify in hip-hop and R&B, Alemeda’s music locations her in a transparent pop-punk lineage with Paramore, Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson. “Silly Little Bitch,” which ponders her tensions together with her mother, places her breathy vocals in opposition to frayed acoustic strumming; “Chameleon,” which options Alemeda’s pal Rachel Chinouriri, has booming drums and a fuzzed-out guitar solo.
“I like how grungy she is,” says Chinouriri, who toured with Alemeda earlier this yr.
Each artists are a part of a rising variety of ladies of colour making different rock — suppose additionally of Beabadoobee, whom Alemeda singles out as a favorite — in an period when streaming and social media have dismantled among the outdated orthodoxies relating to style and id.
Some, however not all: “I don’t know if it’s the world or simply the music trade, nevertheless it looks like there’s a ceiling that we haven’t cracked,” Alemeda says. Chinouriri agrees. “I’ll converse to white artists about their struggles, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s a wrestle I haven’t even gotten to but,’” she says. “I’m nonetheless making an attempt to recover from the primary wrestle.”
Alemeda was born in Chicago however spent a portion of her elementary-school years in Ethiopia, the place her mom is from. (Her dad is from Sudan.) She moved together with her household to Phoenix round fifth grade, which felt like “coming to a unique world,” she says now, whilst her consumption of American music was restricted to what she may hear on the Disney Channel and on her analog clock radio.
“I didn’t even know the race of any particular person I used to be listening to,” she says. “Apart from Beyoncé. I knew Beyoncé was Black.”
Alemeda performs in August in London.
(Jim Dyson / Getty Photographs)
Alemeda describes herself as “a ghost” in highschool. “Nobody even knew what my voice appeared like,” she says. “I used to put on the hijab, and I really feel like while you put on that, it’s already intimidating, particularly should you’re not round different Muslim individuals. So individuals don’t strategy you or discuss to you until they need to.”
She graduated early amid the climactic blowout together with her mother. At this time, she’s sympathetic towards her mom’s parenting strategy: “She was a refugee — bought married when she was like 12, gave delivery when she was 13 or 14,” the singer says. As an adolescent juggling three jobs, although, Alemeda “felt like my life was horrible,” which led her to start out writing songs over beats she’d supply from YouTube.
TDE’s co-president, Moosa Tiffith, got here throughout considered one of her tracks throughout “a late-night deep dive on Instagram,” as he places it. “Simply from that, I noticed a star.” The 2 started speaking by way of DM; Alemeda, who was working in upkeep for American Airways, finally provided to hop on a aircraft to carry out for Tiffith.
“I used to be like, ‘You don’t even need to pay for my ticket,’” she recollects with fun. “He didn’t know I had flight advantages from my job. I used to be simply making an attempt to make it appear to be I used to be actual critical about it.”
Alemeda moved to L.A. in 2020 and immersed herself in music, honing her sound by writing dozens of songs and strengthening her voice in classes with the vocal coach Willie Norwood (who’s additionally the daddy of Brandy). In 2021, her track “Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows” went viral on TikTok; she scored extra sort-of hits with “Publish Nut Readability” and “First Love Tune.”
As a result of she’s working in a rock model, Alemeda says she’s needed to search out collaborators past TDE’s go-to writers and producers. “Individuals listed below are used to going, ‘Right here’s the beat checklist,’” she says of the label’s typical recording course of. “For me, each session is a jam session — like within the films the place the children are within the storage and the mother is like, ‘Youngsters, be quiet!’”
Amongst her studio companions on “However What the Hell Do I Know” are the producers Stint and Tyler Cole and the songwriter Salem Ilese, the final recognized for her early TikTok hit “Mad at Disney.”
Even so, “I’ve been known as a rapper so many instances” as a result of she’s Black, Alemeda says. “I’ve no bars! It’s disrespectful to rappers to name me a rapper.” She laughs. “It actually makes me cringe — like, Oh my God, they’re doing it once more.”
Alemeda and Chinouriri each say that SZA’s large success with genre-blurring albums like “SOS” and “Lana” have opened doorways for artists like them. Ditto Doechii, who “provides a unique perspective of the bizarre Black lady,” Alemeda says.
“From what I’ve seen on-line — as a result of I’m chronically on-line — individuals are uninterested in wanting on the identical factor time and again,” provides the singer, who will carry out this weekend in L.A. on the Camp Flog Gnaw pageant overseen by Tyler, the Creator. “They need to see completely different individuals doing various things.”
The place would Alemeda wish to see herself a yr or two from now?
“You’ve caught me in my seasonal despair period, so this in all probability sounds a bit of detrimental, however I feel simply higher than the place I’m proper now,” she says. “I don’t know should you’ve seen my TikTok, however I be selling the f— out of myself.”
When she bought within the recreation, she says, she was comfortable to feed the algorithm with memes, pranks, dances — no matter it took to draw someone’s consideration.
“I used to be like, I’m 20 — it’s OK to be corny,” she says. “However I didn’t count on to nonetheless be doing little dances on-line. I’m not above it. I’m similar to, Nah, I can’t do this — I’m outdated now.”
