SALIMATA
With the pen of a poet and the melodic sensibilities of a veteran composer, Brooklyn-born rapper SALIMATA’s soulful, swaggering style offers a modern take on New York City’s storied hip-hop tradition.
With the pen of a poet and the melodic sensibilities of a veteran composer, Brooklyn-born rapper SALIMATA’s soulful, swaggering style offers a modern take on New York City’s storied hip-hop tradition.
With the pen of a poet and the melodic sensibilities of a veteran composer, Brooklyn-born rapper SALIMATA’s soulful, swaggering style offers a modern take on New York City’s storied hip-hop tradition. A lifelong poet who found a passion for freestyling as a teen, she released her first single “I Can” in 2019, coming in hot with her float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee flow. She kept up the momentum with a string of standout loosies including 2021’s “Mock Me,” of which Pitchfork praised: “Sometimes you just want to hear someone talk shit, and SALIMATA has that down pat.” But things really took off after 10k label founder MIKE and close affiliate Niontay recognized her as a rising star and encouraged her to take things to the next level. She released her acclaimed debut, Salimata Presents – OUCH, on 10k in 2022, and shared her most recent project, the Risky Business-inspired and Pink Siifu-featuring Wooden Floors, on Fada Records in 2024. Now, fresh off a European tour supporting MIKE, a viral On The Radar freestyle, and two formidable new singles, “9-5” and “foil,” she’s gearing up to bring the new sound of her city to the world with her forthcoming album The Happening — out December 12th via 10k Global.
Raised in Brooklyn, SALIMATA has always been a universe-builder, incorporating fashion, painting, and even sculpting into her artistic practice. Her mother, who grew up in Côte d’Ivoire, introduced her early on to African music and aesthetics — to this day, she still hand-sews and styles the bulk of her daughter’s performance outfits, one of the many ways SALIMATA imbues ancestral wisdom and home-spun care into her work. She also credits her formative years on Tumblr, where she connected with a creative community that included Danii Phae and Ken Rebel, and early freestyles over diverse YouTube beats — from house music to UK grime to free jazz — as sharpening her flow and keen eye for storytelling, whether expressing her feelings or being vulnerable. But although her career has brought her around the globe (most recently, opening for MIKE on his AOTC tour), all roads lead back to New York. She may have worked on music all around the world, but her ideal environment for writing incisive, lyrical rhymes is on the train in New York, where she can tap directly into the vibrance and bustling activity of the city that raised her. It’s no surprise, then, that major tracks like “dreamin” and “u know who u are” hum with the rich textures and propulsive energy of an underground New York subway ride on a perfect summer day. As she asserts on the latter: “Fed the fire to the torch, now the shit up in a flame/ Yeah, I’m from New York, but the whole world know my name.”
Solidified in her self, sound, and community, SALIMATA is ready to “bring my personality to the front burner” on a global scale with her forthcoming album, The Happening. Written and recorded primarily in Marseille, France, an ocean away from the city that raised her, it balances sun-soaked ease with hard-won wisdom and self-assured flexes. Across the record, a cohesive coming-of-age story unfurls over lush, funk and jazz-inflected beats that manage to feel both fresh and timeless. The title, she explains, isn’t so much an occurrence as a state of forward motion (“With momentum and energy in life, I can always be in the happening”). Collaborations with Queens singer-songwriter Kelly Moonstone and the Grammy-nominated Peyton build out The Happening’s peaceful but energized atmosphere. But it’s SALIMATA’s infectious confidence and lyrical flow that drive the album, exemplified in lead singles “9-5,” a poetic kiss-off to all the fuckboys who interrupt her bag, and the sharply observed vignette “foil.” Whether she’s hustling in the studio with the 10k crew or across the Atlantic, SALIMATA is proving her artistic vision is distinctly and defiantly her own — and it’s one to be reckoned with.