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.