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Thirty-eight minutes after we arrive at No Vacancy on a Thursday night, we’re allowed to enter the venue. The bouncer warns us not to take photos until we’re in the bar, and we proceed upstairs, filing into a small bedroom where a lone blonde reclines on a twin bed. She launches into a practiced monologue about the unearthly realm we’ll be entering as she pulls a lever; the bed slides away from the wall on a hidden track to reveal a staircase beneath. I briefly wonder if the only reason we’d been forced to wait so long before entering is for the setting and resetting of this gimmick, charming but probably overwrought for a sold-out album release party.

Down the stairs, then, into a wood-paneled speakeasy; big windows on the rear of the building look out onto the patio where Tommy Genesis is currently performing. We snake our way past an empty DJ booth and a packed bar, into the backyard, jostling and jockeying for position.

The bar at No Vacancy 

We’ve arrived late, and the faithful have already surrendered themselves to their devotionals; they sway and swarm as Genesis raps and sings, dressed in a matching tweed blazer and shorts combo as she moves around the porch that serves as a stage. Twin projectors on a balcony supply billboard graphics behind the crowd, one advertising the new album and the other playing clips from her short film, “God is Wild.”

Tommy Genesis’s stage presence can feel understated, particularly when she performs more tender, romantic tracks. She doesn’t have the explosive energy of someone like Rico Nasty or Playboi Carti, but she commands an equal magnetism; her fans might not know all the words yet, but they’re eager to learn. Sometimes she stands still, or sways slowly, singing to the mic like the crowd isn’t there; other times, she dances like Lorde, jerky angular movements that rock her upper torso and whip her bleached locks about. Her set alternates from gothic, hard-hitting bangers like “100 Bad” and “Execute” to lighter, guitar driven tracks like “Lucky” and “Drive.”

While there are easily 200 people in attendance, the show is surprisingly intimate: she locks eyes with fans as she performs, often standing on the steps separating the patio from the makeshift stage of the porch, staying close to the edge of the crowd. While she might not hurl herself into our midst à la Lil Uzi Vert stage diving at Rolling Loud, she conveys a similar sense of invitation: I am not above you; we are on the same level.

Genesis explores femininity and sexuality in her music, stridently singing lines like “only thing more pretty [than my face] is my pussy,” and “your cum is hot but you can’t breathe.” Usually such crass lines fall into the pitfall of “it’s provocative! It gets the people going!” Tommy makes them work because of the way her sexuality is so clearly integrated into her work. When her music operates in brasher, hip-hop and punk-influenced areas, sex appeal is a weapon, used to bend others to her will. When she turns more romantic and introspective, lust and love become indistinguishable.

While her discography is clearly rooted in hip-hop, she doesn’t rap so much as she free-associates; poetic turns of phrase like “palm trees glitter in paradise frost” coexist on songs with more traditionally rap lines such as “we gon shoot a weak bitch with the weakest shot.” She shares a clear lineage with M.I.A., with whom she did an ad campaign for Mercedes-Benz in March 2017. Her beats sound like they were passed down by the aliens, or perhaps found in a remote jungle, or maybe created by Sophia the Robot (of wigless Hanson Robotics fame).

Beyond her sonic palette and versatility, what makes Genesis’s work so compelling is the way it manifests a worldview; whether she’s collaging biblical allusions on “Eden” or telling weak dudes to fuck off on “Hair Like Water, Wavy Like The Sea,” her lyrics often feel like impressionistic poems about her personal life.

 

But maybe that vulnerability isn’t what we need from performers, even if it’s what we profess to want. In a 2016 review of a Carly Rae Jepsen concert, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib mused, “… maybe no one actually wants a pop star who could be their friend. It erases the boundary of spectacle.” While we eagerly follow artists across social media and TMZ, we understand these things are glimpses of a person, a proxy for understanding.

I keep thinking about that piece, standing in the backyard at No Vacancy painfully sober, and later inside the bar, painfully sober, waiting patiently as Genesis dotes on fans who seem oblivious to the throng of onlookers eager for their own moment with the star.

Will Tommy be able to do this in a year? I don’t mean the music, I mean this: she stands face to face with her fans sans barrier and looks them in the eyes as she performs. Afterwards, she hangs out in the lobby, a throng of people swarming around her for conversations, lauding her performance and the new album, telling her about how they found her music, and, of course, snapping selfies and group pics.

She grins at us as she talks to other attendees, finally talks to us, is pulled away, circles back; a consummate houseparty host, no one can get enough of her and yet, there is plenty of Tommy to go around. She invited everyone, but whoever she’s talking to right now, that’s who she threw the party for.

Text by Vivian Medithi; Photos by Laurie Maemura.