Few
performers in hip-hop boast a pedigree like Queen YoNasDa. Every time
she steps to the mic, YoNasDa is in the shadows of her luminary
grandfather Minister Louis Farrakhan. For the halfblack/half-Native
American (of the Oglala Lakota tribe) musician—and Staten Island
ex-pat—the rap game is a shot at providence.
Her birth during The Longest Walk protest in D.C. three decades ago prompted a Navajo medicine man marching nearby to name her YoNasDa (pronounced Yo-Naja- Ha) Lonewolf or “Precious Jewel.”
Shortly after YoNasDa took her first steps, her fugitive parents—father Theadius McCall was wanted on a racketeering rap— took her on the run. “We were staying throughout the United States in the back of a pickup truck,” she remembers. “He was stealing from the rich and keeping it. I want to say [he was] giving back to the poor.”
Besides pocketing the ill-gained paper, McCall had blood on his fists as a wife beater. Growing-up on the lam, YoNasDa found sanctuary in her own beat. “When that was going on I would replay musicals in my head,” she recalls.
Running out of interstate, both of her parents got nabbed—dad, who had been in and-out of prison, did hard time while her mom Wauneta Lonewolf served four years in the clink for collusion.YoNasDa was more or less orphaned. She trails back on one ditty, “I felt so much pain, yo, I can’t even cry/ The feds grabbed ma when I was only five.”
A second chance came from a towering pulpit when Farrakhan formally adopted the youth; enlisting his daughter Maria and her husband Alif as legal guardians.
“Annie
was a foster kid, and she got a second chance with Daddy Warbucks,”
explains YoNasDa. “When Minister Farrakhan came into my life he was my
Daddy Warbucks.”
The Nation of Islam spiritual leader took her under his wings and introduced her to classical music— he even taught her violin. “He was very patient with me when I was in the fourth grade learning how to play,” she says.
Her album God, Love & Music released July 7 on Kanye West’s Supa Music Network label, and the record features some heavy hitters—from Cappadonna to Keith Murray. And like any enterprising player she’s already cultivating the sequel: Love, Hope & Faith.
Despite enlisting marquis industry talent, it’s the elocutionary Grandpa Farrakhan’s cameo that captivates. “He is actually speaking on one of the interludes,” she says.
How does the Nation Of Islam frontman take to his granddaughter opting for the hip-hop path?
“I let him hear the full album and he loved it,”
gushes YoNasDa. “He told me to go all the way with it. So I got his
approval, and I’m going hard and strong.”
A rearing by
Farrakhan clearly influenced the former Soul Train dancer’s boundaries,
and while coming up, she dealt with compromising situations. “I would
go for auditions while the ‘real hip-hop’ dancer was fading-out of the
video scene and the ‘video vixen’ was coming in— meaning a lot of
former strippers with no real dance lessons. They wanted me to wear
basically nothing to get these jobs. I have such a strong legacy within
my family, I couldn’t succumb to the money to be that vixen.”
The
Phoenix-based performer maintains high standards.You won’t hear many
fourletter words on a YoNasDa record. And the single mother of an
8-year-old son put a gag order on the B-word. “What past female leaders
was called Bitch Nefarteti or Bitch Rosa Parks? Nah, they were all
queens.”
It took five years and a resiliency reserve to cap
this latest effort. She succumbed to homeless nights in Baltimore and
lost her social activist mom Wauneta Lonewolf to lung cancer.
Rising
from her downtrodden state, YoNasDa migrated to a hardscrabble section
of Staten Island and later obliged a request by Minister Farrakhan to
come to Chicago and work on The Millions More Movement.
Instead she began to pen lyrics and perform them at will after moving west. “I’ve seen her grow,” notes the beatmaster Cappadonna, of the Wu-Tang Clan. “She’s coming with something that’s more pleasing and fulfilling to the mind.” Despite Queen YoNasDa’s talent, Cappadonna knows the cannibalistic side of the industry: “It’s a nasty, dirty business,” he concedes. “I’m in the rap game and it’s hard for me.This sort of livelihood is not something I recommend to a virtuous woman. But if you got something to say, like she does, then you should say it loud.”
There’s a dearth of prolific female MCs (or femcees) of late
save for standouts like Lil’ Mama and M.I.A. In order to break through
the testosterone-filled noise YoNasDa feels she must face herself.
“There’s
a lot of talented females out there rapping but if you not being
truthful and not telling your story, you become a gimmick or some
trend,” she says. “I’m going against the trend and I don’t worry about
fitting in.”
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Queen YoNasDa
July 12, Club 40 C, 40 Ave. C (betw. E. 3rd & 4th Sts.); 8, $TBA
