Boo. (Photo by Jordan Jacobs)
Boo’s uptempo, autotuned tracks might come off like they’re meant for the club, but in her lyrics, the rapper is often on-edge and weary. Beneath the neon-lit synths and thunderclaps of bass, there’s a twinge of sadness to her sound. At times, her voice sounds detached, like she’s in her own thoughts while the party continues around her.
On her latest single “On Me” featuring Rayven Justice, Boo paints a picture of a volatile Oakland, where, even during good times, the threat of violence looms near. Even when Boo is celebrating her successes, she remains watchful and ready to defend herself.
“I like to tell about my city,” she says when we meet up for coffee in North Oakland, not too far from where she grew up. “A lot of things out here don’t get told the way they should; some people get misguided.”
In contrast to the tough persona the 23-year-old projects in her music, in person, Boo speaks in a soft voice and uses her words sparingly. “If an older cat made a song about the club, people from out of town might think that’s what’s happening out here,” she goes on. “It may happen, but they don’t know that after that event — the party that they think that song was about — someone might get killed.”
“On Me,” a hypnotic, paranoid street anthem, is earning her a growing fan base in and outside her hometown. The single racked up over a hundred thousand streams on Thizzler’s YouTube channel in its first two months and got a shout out on 106.1 KMEL. Fans from as far as Germany have sent her videos of themselves singing along to its infectious hook.
Boo’s 2016 mixtape, It Is What It Is, shows her evolution into a savvy pop songwriter. Production by FeezyDisABanger and TheBeatPlug sounds full and epic, evoking DJ Mustard’s work with R&B artists such as Tinashe. Through sleek rap-singing, Boo offers observations from a merciless, dog-eat-dog world. And despite her contrasting style, lyrically, she comes as hard as the street rappers who feature on the project, including All Black, Dick Boston, Zay, and Trill Youngin Mitche.
The cover of It Is What It Is features a rose growing out of a crack in the concrete, a reference to a well-known poem by Tupac Shakur about beauty blossoming from a hopeless place. Fittingly, the mixtape is a testament to Boo’s resilience.
When Boo was a senior at Oakland Technical High School, music became a way to express herself when she felt no one was listening. She grew up in a tight-knit family, she said, describing fond memories of ballgames and vacations. But things shifted when she was a teenager. Her mother battled with a serious health issues and eventually was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer.
“Once we learned she was gonna die, we had like a week to know she was going to die,” recalled Boo, gazing stoically into the distance. “When the day came, it really came.”
As if that wasn’t enough tragedy for a young woman to bear, months before Boo’s mom passed, she also lost her best friend, Raymen Justice, to a senseless act of gun violence. Raymen was the younger brother of Rayven Justice, Boo’s collaborator for “On Me.” At the time, Rayven and Raymen were in an R&B group together called The Justice Brothers. And after Raymen’s passing, Boo decided to dedicate herself to music to honor his memory.
“It was my way of keeping my attachment to him and keeping his name alive,” she said. “[When] my mom passed, basically, I just stuck with the music after that.”
Boo recorded most of It Is What It Is when she was pregnant her young daughter Ryan. And now that “On Me” has taken off, she’s motivated to keep pursuing music. After our interview, she was headed to a Berkeley studio to work on her forthcoming mixtape, It Was What It Was. And she’s also working on several music videos through her own production company, Block 4 Motions, which she runs with her cousin, Jordan Jacobs. The two of them have made videos for notable local artists including Lil Kayla and Legendvry, as well as Boo’s own videos for “On Me” and “Bout It.”
“Life is hard, period,” Boo reflected with a smile as we parted ways. “I like challenges. I work good under pressure, so I go for it.”
