Every month, Consequence proudly puts the spotlight on an artist who’s poised for the big time with our CoSign accolade. For February 2024, we’re diving into the artistic mind of LUCI and her debut full-length album They Say They Love You.
LUCI hasn’t always been the best rule-follower. “I had lunch with one of my old art teachers recently, and we were just laughing about how I didn’t listen as an art student,” the musician tells Consequence. “I’d take the criteria and bend it, all the time, at any and all costs. It’s like, you give a class an art project, and you’ve got 20 to 30 kids doing basically the same painting. I always hated that. I don’t want my piece to look like everyone else’s.”
It’s not that LUCI didn’t enjoy art class. As affable as she is today, the North Carolina native recalls spending much of her early upbringing making visual art alone in her bedroom, going on to graduate from a 6-12 art school in Charlotte in 2015; now based in Brooklyn, she still paints regularly. She sees her music not so much as a separate pursuit, but more as an extension of herself as an artist. Her debut LP They Say They Love You (out April 19th) is no exception.
Broadly speaking, LUCI’s music falls under the hip-hop umbrella, her voice blending the nimble delivery of her rap heroes with a scorching croon that could stop you in your tracks. She began writing the seeds of her first songs around age 10, informed by radio hits from Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy: “I realized I wanted to write catchy songs,” she says. “I wanted to write songs that made people dance and made people want to repeat it. I thought, ‘Why do I keep singing the same songs over again? How do the songs get stuck in my head?’”
And while that ethos drives the majority of LUCI’s music, that only begins to scratch the surface with the palate of They Say They Love You. The dreamy, romantic “11:11” hinges on a colorful pop beat that feels like dancing through city streets at midnight; “Call Jane” takes on the dark, mysterious edge of gothic rock as she seamlessly flits between rapping and spellbinding yowl; “Rockwitchu” sounds like what Portishead’s Dummy might’ve sounded like if it was recorded today. “I used to think, ‘oh, I’m gonna do a rap album, and then I’m gonna do a folk album, but I also want to do a rock album,’” she says. “And I always felt like they had to be a different project.”
Thematically, much of They Say They Love You centers around LUCI’s experience navigating the music industry as a queer Black woman: “‘Hip-hop saved me’/ But look who’s saving hip-hop!” she boasts on “Martyr,” a track about the commodification of Black Americans’ culture. Its chorus immediately calls to mind the centuries-old Arabian riff, a melody that’s been co-opted by white composers who muddle its Northern African origins.
LUCI started to hone in on her sound almost by accident. She moved to Asheville after high school graduation and quickly began immersing herself in the fledgling local music scene, regularly going to DIY basement shows that didn’t usually draw much of a crowd. “I’m just staring at this guy holding the microphone, and I want it so bad, but I’m drunk and shy,” she recalls of one night in particular. “One of my friends just taps me on the shoulder, and she’s like, ‘go do it.’ So I go to take the microphone, I close my eyes, and I start singing.”
By the time LUCI opened her eyes, the basement was full, all eyes and ears on her. “That was the first time where I felt fully freeform,” she adds. “And I was freestyling in all of my different styles, and with all of my influences, where it all suddenly just meshed together. Everything just flowed so fluidly, and people loved it.”
That experience foreshadowed the trajectory of LUCI’s solo career, which would lead her to settle in New York before releasing her debut EP, 2022’s Juvenelia. In Asheville, however, she got more experience performing in groups than solo, fronting a band called Defbeat whose sound she describes as “System of a Down with some Massive Attack.” She quips: “People used to always compare us to Rage Against the Machine, but straight up, I think they just said that because I’m Black and I rap.”
In fact, LUCI doesn’t seem to feel entirely comfortable being compared to any other artists at all. She says people have likened her melodic flow to that of Lauryn Hill, or her raspy belt to Janis Joplin, but she politely disagrees with those sentiments. “I’m like, ‘dope!’” she adds with a self-effacing laugh. “But I’m not sure how to take that.” She is a fan of those musical predecessors. But it seems like LUCI almost envisions her music as a piece of artwork hanging in the school hallway alongside the work of 30 other kids given the same criteria — she doesn’t want her painting to look like everyone else’s.
With that considered, then, it might be surprising that one of LUCI’s biggest creative inspirations is one of the most commercially successful artists in history. “I honestly listen to way too much Drake,” she admits. “As many ‘Drakes’ as there are now, and people can’t really differentiate between them, Drake was the first Drake. It’s only played out because people keep playing it out. I love his lyrics, I love his attitude, I love his production team – he’s just so punchy.”
LUCI would never try to duplicate Drake’s career, but she operates with a similar mindset of bringing her own unique perspective to hip-hop. “I’m different, and I’m bringing new flavors,” she says matter-of-factly, with a warm ear-to-ear grin. “I’m ready. I always have ideas. They literally just don’t stop coming.”
