Quay Dash Is Bringing a Much Needed Narrative to Rap

As we sit in her calmly-lit apartment on the Lower East Side, Quay Dash gives me some insight into her musical preferences while the instrumental to Common's "It's Your World" starts to play from a YouTube playlist. "It's not something I want to vibe, smoke, or fuck to," she says frankly of rap's current dominating sound. "I want to run out of the club when I hear that shit."

Though she isn't quite a rap purist, the Bronx native prefers the rawness of New York rap that she grew up on, which can be heard in her own music. Quay sits tall as we face each other. Her hair is flowing down the shoulders of her black lace halter top with flaring sleeves as her hands rest on each of the chair's arms. Poised throughout most of our exchange, she gets most excited when we talk about rap and how it can be political without ever touching on presidential candidates and who you should or shouldn't vote for.

Born in Alabama before her family relocated to New York City when she was three or four, Quay Dash was prepping for her career as a rapper long before she realized. The 24-year-old spent the majority of her youth in group homes and foster care, where writing was a suggested method of self-care. "In group homes and residential treatment centers, your psychiatrist you see for therapy usually suggests you have a journal or diary to write down your thoughts," she tells me. "I was always very artsy and poetic with my words." Poetry was the launching pad for Quay's early raps. The more she wrote, the more she began to read aloud to herself, realizing that her words, when spoken, hit better as songs than conventional poetry. Those feelings were validated when she started sharing raps with her friends in The Bronx: "I used to spit my bars to them and they'd be like, 'Oh, you can really rap. Let me start recording you and get some early footage before shit happens,'" she recalls with a smirk.

That motivational boost from friends led Quay to started fishing for instrumentals to rap over and once she was comfortable with the craft, she went on to hit New York's underground scene to make a name. She was especially drawn to parties thrown by Contessa Stuto, a pioneer in New York's party scene, for her embracing of the city's avant-garde community where people were truly welcome regardless of their sexuality or lifestyle. Stuto's Cunt Mafia events hosted much of New York's recent underground gems like A$AP Rocky, Le1f, Ratking, and more before they bubbled to the mainstream. In 2013, Quay met Contessa, rapped for her at a friend's house and was a part of the Cunt Mafia collective shortly after. Though no longer a member, it was at this stage where Quay gained her chops as a performer while regularly releasing music that teetered between 90s New York rap and the lo-fi, distorted sounds of early Memphis rap. According to Quay, this was one of the few space's where she could belong and thrive as an artist, comfortably.

As we prepare to go on a walk around her neighborhood, Quay takes a break to find the right jacket to be photographed in. Her boyfriend helps her go through the closet and other corners of the house. She stresses over one in particular as he assures her that's it's somewhere in the apartment. Finally, she decides on a long, rust-colored crushed velvet one before we head out.

Last month, Quay dropped her debut EP, Transphobic, an impassioned fusion of electronic, club music, and flows reminiscent of the Boom Bap era. The project, while successful just with those elements, is equally valuable as a political piece; much of Quay's content deals with the realities of living as a black trans woman in a big city, constantly being subject to ridicule and threatened with worse. On songs like "Square Toe Leather Boot," over spooky Three 6 Mafia-like piano riffs, she raps "Niggas see me on the street, hating on my fly / And now they getting horny when I'm feeling on my thigh," speaking on the irony of getting negative looks from men who have yet to grapple with their own sexuality. "Wilin'," a mixture of thunderous drums and bleeping synths by Celestial Trax & Orlando Volcano, is a take on transphobia where Quay reverses the aggression she gets from onlookers on a daily basis.

Being cognizant of the constant judgement she'll receive, Quay knows that she has no room to slip. "I always feel like as a trans woman, you always have to be over the top," she says sitting regally in her armchair, her posture mirroring that of a talk show guest. "People expect us to be over the top but I'm not doing it because of people's expectations. I'm doing it for my own self and how I feel. If I feel like, I'm gonna go hard then I'm gonna go hard. If I wanna play and be soft, I'll play and be soft."

It was also last month that Quay ended up in Canada to hit the road with Canadian electronic star Peaches who asked Dash to join her on tour for seven dates. While excited to open up for an artist she's been listening to since her preteen MySpace days, she had feelings of loneliness while on the road, being the only black person on the tour bus and being away from home. She had her first experience with being heckled while performing, as well. "I remember performing one night and seeing people in the back, who didn't really understand, walk out or go get a drink. I kind of took that to the heart," she recalls. "But after I got to the dance floor after performing, people told me they loved it and bought me drinks." These are the experiences that push Quay's music—taking situations that could be demoralizing when dwelled on and channeling that anger into song. "Most of the shit that I write about is fueled by society's bullshit that gets tossed at me everyday," she says. "Most times I dress down because I don't want to deal with shit on the street. I care about what people say and it gets very overwhelming." Making music is her preferred way of coping.

Towards the end of our time together, we circle back to the ways rap can be political and begin discussing the need of multiple voices in rap music, especially different sides of the Black experience. It's here that Quay seems to find the most comfort—knowing that her voice as a black trans woman is just as imperative as the next. It's one of the biggest voids we have in rap, period.

"This is something that I'm good at. I'm not the type to work in some deli or H&M. I'm not that kind of girl. My voice needs to be heard. It's not like I'm talking shit on a mic. It's political shit," she says. "It's about people speaking on their struggle and what's going on in their lives. Whether negative or positive, it's powerful. It's real."

Photos by Shane Smith. Follow him on Instagram.

Lawrence Burney is a writer from Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter.