For years, Leikeli47 has hidden her face behind an array of colorful, self-made masks, saying that she wanted to keep the focus on her music. It’s been a solid strategy to date, because the music has been stellar, with albums like Wash & Set and Shape Up giving Leikeli an ironclad reputation as one of the most creative and skilled rappers in the business today.
But with her new album, Lei Keli Ft. 47 / For Promotional Use Only, coming out soon, she’s taking a different tack, revealing her face for the first time in the video for “450.” While the black-and-white video opens up with the rapper still rocking her signature disguise, she unmasks after the first verse of the high-energy track, spending the rest of the video alternating between her trademark look and her new, bare-faced look.
Lei Keli Ft. 47 / For Promotional Use Only is the Virginia rapper’s first new full-length release since 2022’s Shape Up, and her first since leaving RCA Records. She’s popping out to promote the new album in Los Angeles at a special listening event tonight, which you can find RSVP info for here.
Check out the video for “450” above and see below for the album tracklist.
Unfortunately due to the pressure to constantly produce record, hip-hop has lost a lot of its mysterious quality. However, “Chitty Bang” rapper Leikeli47 maintains enough for her peers. Between her signature bandana face covering to her sporadic drops, Leikeli47 gets a kick out of keeping fans on their toes.
Well, it has been two years since Leikeli47’s last studio, Shape Up, hit streaming platforms. So that means she has something in the tuck ready to go. Yesterday (October 14), Leikeli47 confirmed those suspensions by announcing her next project.
Over on her official Instagram page, Leikeli47 revealed her next body of work, Leikeli Ft. 47, is set to drop on Friday, October 25.
In a subsequent upload, Los Angeles fans have the chance to experience the forthcoming record in-person. An album listening event and live performance with Leikeli47 is scheduled to take place at Jumpman LA starting at 8 pm local time. Find more information here.
Based on the messaging of her album’s cover Leikeli47 is ready to step into the light. Supporters believe that means she could ditch the face coverings. During an interview with Vibe, Leikeli47 revealed why she chooses to protect her identity. “I feel like the Dark Knight, or one of those superheroes, or Superman,” she said. “The mask, it represents freedom. I’m free with it on.”
However, it could also confirm rumors that she’s departed from her label, RCA Records. Over on the company’s current artists’ directory, Leikeli47 no longer appears.
NPR Music is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a string of live concerts at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., and fortunately for anyone who isn’t located in the capital city, NPR is sharing the performances on YouTube. So far, NPR has tapped names like Amber Mark, Bartees Strange, and Yendry, and the latest addition is masked MC Leikeli47, who put on a glittering, ball-inspired performance that had the crowd voguing like an episode of Drag Race as she blazed through renditions of songs from all three of her albums, including “Wash & Set,” “BITM,” and of course, inescapable hit “Money.”
Last year, Leikeli47 saw roaring success with the release of her third album, Shape Up, which features the singles “Zoom,” “Chitty Bang,” “LL Cool J,” and “BITM,” as her public profile continued to skyrocket in spite of her apparent commitment to anonymity. She popped up on a few film soundtracks, including for the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, continued to place her songs in trailers and on television (including, yes, the season 15 premiere of the aforementioned Drag Race), and landed on many of the year’s “best of” lists, including Uproxx’s own Best Albums of 2022, all while leading a resurgence of Black presence in electronic and dance music scenes.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Back in 2019, the fourth episode of the second season of the Black-ish spinoff Grown-ish featured the debut of Leikeli47’s video for “Tic Boom.” The lead-up to the video throughout the episode found the show’s cast preparing a watch party for a mystery artist’s video premiere, with the cast debating what makes a musical genius. The episode was an obvious reference to then-recent album premieres from the likes of Frank Ocean and Kanye West, who both got name-checked, along with Chief Keef, Drake, and Young Thug.
Then, one character makes an observation that seems obvious in hindsight but highlights an ongoing problem in pop culture – especially when it comes to hip-hop. Why are all the so-called “geniuses” men? Even now, in an era with more female rappers charting than ever before – from Cardi B and Doja Cat to Latto and Saweetie – somehow, female artists still seem to receive less attention and respect than their male counterparts. I was reminded of this over the past weekend, as my social feeds buzzed over Kendrick Lamar’s new album.
Less pronounced was the buzz for Leikeli47’s new album, Shape Up. The culmination of a beauty shop-themed trilogy including 2017’s Wash & Set and 2018’s Acrylic, on the surface, Shape Up also bears all the hallmarks of a work of rap genius. As part of a trilogy, the 14-track project comes with rich mythology of its own built by the masked rapper’s prior works. Leikeli has always defied convention, eschewing both contemporary and traditional hip-hop sounds to craft her own unique, dancefloor-ready take on the genre. She’s as informed by the drag ballroom scene as she is the trap house, with beats featuring influences from house, techno, and dancehall.
She’s also a superb rapper with one hell of a hook; taking a page from the book of the late, great MF DOOM, she has yet to make a public appearance without one of her signature face masks. She makes them herself out of bandanas and balaclavas, occasionally bedazzling or otherwise embellishing them. We don’t even know her real name; she’s like a modern-day hip-hop superhero, using her anonymity to put the focus squarely on the boundary-pushing, eclectic style she’s pioneering.
It’s hard to hear booming, confident jams like “Chitty Bang” and “LL Cool J” without wondering how they aren’t as ubiquitous as those of her female peers – let alone the breezy No. 1s accumulated by men like Drake, Future, and Jack Harlow. They’re every bit as catchy and transportive, every bit as relevant to the times, every bit as quotable and cocksure, with lines like “It’s all checks and balances, baby, the world is mine,” feeling just as much like potential Instagram captions as any of the catchphrases the above-mentioned names have offered recently.
And Leikeli can sing, too. I mean, legitimately sing, not that weird, atonal humming thing a lot of rappers have been doing in recent years. On “Done Right” and “Hold My Hand,” she switches to full-on R&B, offering tender reflections on romance and relationships minus the toxicity that’s marked the genre lately. Meanwhile, “BITM” and “Jay Walk” practically beg the listener to catwalk, strut, and vogue like it was the ball culture heyday of the late 1980s. And lest anyone doubt her rap skills, her storytelling takes the fore on “Free To Love,” while her wordplay shines on “Instant Classic.”
If this album — this consistency and cohesion in eclecticism, this total commitment to the presentation, is not the work of a genius, then the list of who all deserves such a title needs to get several dozen names shorter. If anything, the muted buzz of excitement leading up to this project’s release just proves that in hip-hop, eclecticism can be a disadvantage as much as a strength. Pushing the genre’s boundaries can earn an artist a lot of love from critics and fans, but it can just as easily take them too far beyond the margins for rap centrists who want the genre to remain the same as much as they want it to grow.
It also proves that hip-hop still has a long way to go in terms of truly including women in the conversation. Just recently, both Lil Wayne and Ja Rule admonished their peers and successors to acknowledge the contributions of women in hip-hop, with Wayne singling out Missy Elliott for her own innovative catalog. Incidentally, one of the names Leikeli47 is most often compared to is Missy (both are from Virginia, which may explain their sympathetic resonance with one another). Sometimes, it feels very much like we’ve failed the latter, who only recently began to receive flowers in the form of lifetime achievement awards and belated shout-outs from the rappers she’s inspired. The same can’t happen for Leikeli47. They say genius is never appreciated in its time, but today, we certainly have the opportunity to acknowledge her as the genius she’s already proven herself to be.
