At the age of 30, Calgary rapper Tea Fannie thought she was arriving late on the music scene.
“They say it’s an age game,” Fannie, an anticipated performer at this year’s Folk on the Rocks festival, said. “And I just told myself that if it ever plateaued, I would let it go and call it a hobby and c’est la vie. But it’s literally been climbing ever since then.”
Also against the odds was the fact that a female rapper is far less common in the hip-hop scene, she added.
“If you found one or two five or six years ago, it was cool, but I just got back from the Netherlands and seeing all the female rappers coming from all over the world to there, and then having a few female rappers in our city now, I would say it’s definitely still not on par with the guys at all, but maybe before it was one-eighth and now it is one-quarter,” she said.
Fannie said while it is her love of lyrics over the bop of the song that defines her style, she likes to rap on as many different genres of beats as she can. As a result, she said she has discovered her music appeals to a widespread audience.
“I want my audience to be as random as my brain. If you look inside my playlist of stuff I listen to, it would be pretty random, too,” she said of her eclectic taste that has included Whitney Houston, Garth Brooks, Green Day, Savage Garden, and Korn over the years.
Any overarching theme to her music is also random, said Fannie.
“It is always whatever I feel at the moment,” she said. So, my brain is very random and I try to make the music reflect that in some way. There are times when I will be heavily political, times when I am overly sexual, times when I am talking about having a good time in the club or talking about a friend’s experience. It goes all over the place. I really wish I could confine it, but it goes wherever I feel like.
“Last year, I hopped on my friend’s set list because she does folk music and I rapped on one of her folk beats. And I am also doing a country remix with a country artist in Edmonton,” she said of her diverse talent that also includes collaborations with K-Riz, Gukie, Z-Wave and Sarafin.
Because hip-hop as a genre has only been around for about 50 years, Fannie said it is still morphing.
“I see so many different forms of rap now on different genres, I feel that in the next 10 years, it is going to be on a whole other level I am probably not even thinking of,” she said.
Fannie will be performing at Folk on the Rocks with DJ Catfish the Wizard and said she is looking forward to her first visit to the NWT.
“I am excited because it looks like the crowd might be like Folk Fest and maybe a bit like Sled Island (Music and Arts Festival) here where they are just here for good times,” she said. “All genres and just good music no matter what type it is. It feels welcoming.”
In terms of her musical goals and aspirations, Fannie feels she is on her way and climbing.
“I always wanted to touch every province and territory in Canada. I’ve done four provinces so far, and I want music to take me there, so the fact that this is going to help me knock that off my bucket list, and the fact I get to go to Yellowknife for music, it’s amazing for me.
“But my ultimate goal is to be a household name. I want to sign a napkin for the village,” she said.
“Once you get your name to mean enough, you can literally sign something and put it on eBay and it could generate enough to boost an ecosystem in a village,” she explained. “There are different ways to change the world, but to get there, a household name is my goal.”
Folk on the Rocks 2023 will be held in Yellowknife July 14 to 16.