In House With Dessa: The MC/Singer on Doomtree's 'No Kings,' Hip-Hop Homophobia and Not Being 'Feminem'

In House is AOL Music's series in which we welcome artists into our offices to play some music, chat with our staffers and, generally, just hang out. For our latest visit, Spinner sat down with Minneapolis singer and rapper Dessa to discuss her career, her new album with Doomtree, 'No Kings,' and her views on homophobia and feminism in hip-hop.

"It's like a very steep incline on a snowy afternoon with a very strong headwind."

According to Dessa, that's how difficult it is to describe her sound -- a hyper-literate mixture of singing and rapping over both driving beats and a jazz-influenced live band -- to someone who's never heard her before.

"I get the skepticism," the 30-year-old Minneapolis-based artist tells Spinner about people who don't understand her genre-blending style, at least on paper. "A lot of this s--- doesn't sound so cool to talk about. I could spend all day trying to pitch it and I feel like a used car salesman. It just feels gross. I'll give you two of what I think are my best tracks, and then you'll feel it and then we've got our answer."

Dessa has plenty of answers for the doubters. After releasing her excellent debut full-length, 'A Badly Broken Code,' in 2010, she returned in October 2011 with 'Castor, the Twin,' an LP that featured re-recordings of her older work accompanied by a live band and a new track, 'The Beekeeper.' A month later, she and her cohorts in the Minneapolis-based hip-hop collective Doomtree released their acclaimed collaborative album, 'No Kings.' It's certainly an impressive run for an artist who never had much involvement in music, aside from sing-alongs with her mother and aborted classical-guitar lessons with her dad.

"I started with an interest in language arts and wanted to be a writer. Then a friend encouraged me to go to a poetry slam and from there, in Minneapolis anyway, there's a lot of overlap in the spoken-word communities and hip-hop communities," she says. "Another one of the performers was like, 'Man, you should try doing that over beats' and it was on his urging that I did." As her interest in hip-hop grew, a friend gave her a CD of older Doomtree material. After listening, she assumed they were from the Pacific Northwest, but it turned out they lived right next door. "I met them as neighbors," she says. "I was a big fan of their work, then friend and eventually a member."

Like the diverse Minneapolis music scene, Doomtree is made up of individuals who don't divide themselves along genre or gender lines, a unity that's reflected in the 'No Kings' title. "I listen to Phillip Glass and Stef [P.O.S.] listens to Boys Noize and Cecil [Otter] loves Beirut," she says. "There's a lot of daylight between us musically and we look really different. That album title is meant to imply there really is collaborating, and people generally might be well served by that -- allowing people to make their own decisions, not trying to be putting your boot on someone else's neck or trying to figure out where on the totem pole you land. Just jump off the totem pole and go make some music."

Since her introduction to rap, Dessa has become enough of an aficionado to be able to teach a Hip-Hop Composition class and serve as artist in residence at McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minn. (On top of that, her 'Broken Code' track 'Dutch' bolsters her literary cred with such lines as "Chicago manual of style keeps the prose right, crisp" and "I keep Pope in the glovebox, Plath on the dash.")

"It was like poetics seen through the lens of hip-hop: What makes for a good simile? What makes for a good metaphor? How is assonance and alliteration even more important in hip-hop than a lot of other song forms, even in a lot of other writing, like Dr. Seuss? There is so much play with the actual sonic nature of words."

Dessa also encouraged students to explore the social impact and responsibility of rap, a subject that's come up repeatedly in the music press thanks to Odd Future. "Do entertainers have any moral obligations to the culture? Do listeners?" she asks. "How does homophobia in hip-hop play out?

"Most of my extended circle would not identify as homophobes, but [they] listen to music that is homophobic. The question is, is that OK, and if so, why is that OK? Maybe it's OK because, man, it's just pulp. Who the f--- cares? It's art. On the other side, is this informing the opinion of kids? If it does, maybe we do have some cause for concern."


Gender is another issue Dessa constantly has to grapple with in the male-dominated music world. "I do feel strongly about it but I feel like the ideas that are thrust upon me aren't mine," she admits. "I'm a strong believer in meritocracy, but I'm not really into like Femcee or Feminem. I would much rather be your 10th-favorite rapper than be your favorite girl rapper. It's not like weight lifting, you know? We don't need two heats.

"Sometimes when we do too much celebrating of women, it makes it seem like they overcame their handicap of being a woman to make a record, and that seems ass-backwards," she continues. "There are showcases of all female artists, and I'm totally game, as long as all of them are awesome. Because even if one of them isn't up to snuff it looks like we're holding a bake sale for a charitable cause and not because this show is f---ing awesome."

Speaking of f---ing awesome shows, Doomtree are currently touring the U.S. in support of 'No Kings' (check the tour dates here). Dessa, meanwhile, is already working on her next solo album, which she expects to drop in 2012.

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