This year I went to Camp Trans and the best part of it turned out to be watching my new favorite emcee, Heidi Barton Stink. The first day I arrived I met Heidi and she told me we would be performing together on friday. I hadn’t heard of her and I had no idea what to expect, I definitely did not think for one second that I would fall IN LOVE. She is not just a great “queer rapper”, she is the real deal. She is an emcee’s emcee. Hailing from Minneapolis MN, Heidi is a self described trans-radical-queer MC that spits rhymes about trans rights, addiction and the shame and tribulation’s a trans-queer faces growing up in a midwestern city.
Heidi took a moment to talk to me about how she got her start and what she plans to do next!
When and how did you start rapping?
I secretly wrote poems and lyrics when I was young, but I didn’t really start rapping until i was eighteen or so. Back then I was just jamming out in my dad’s basement trying to make my words work to some sort of rhythm. I did my first show at the ripe old age of twenty three.
Have you always been outspoken about your identity?
No, I used to do pretty generic word play in my music before I was ready to accept that I was Trans. Writing and performing about my identity helped me work through some internalized transphobia that I was experiencing early in my transition.
Once when I was playing a show in London I told the audience I was a transsexual, to which a woman shouted “what do you mean? Do you wear women’s knickers?” I know you have been mistaken for an FTM before, how did that feel?
Yeah, I have even been on a couple dates with people who thought I was a trans guy. Assumptions about identity always suck and being a somewhat butch trans dyke is an identity a lot of people have never even thought of… and just don’t really understand. I end up having to give a lot of people a crash course in gender studies much of the time, which is fucking exhausting, but I do it anyways hoping maybe it will save somebody else some time and grief. I also tend to tell cis people that I’M not offended but don’t expect other trans people to NOT be offended when you ask invasive questions-and for Christs sake don’t ask about our genitals OR our “knickers.”
When you write, do you think of your audience, or do you write more for yourself?
A combination. Music has really healed me and made my life a lot better and I want to share that. I hope to make music that has that effect on others.
Who do you feel like your audience is?
I thought my audience was just going to radical queer and trans folk who are into rap, but I have some fans that are cis straight people. Some of which come up to me after shows and say something along the lines of,
“I don’t even really like hiphop but I love your music!”
My line of thinking is ‘yes you do’ my music is HipHop, if you like my music then you like some HipHop. Maybe they haven’t heard HipHop that spoke to them before because they’ve had their ears closed to it. They may have made assumptions about HipHop’s content and the people who make it. And assumptions about identity always sucks.
The Familiar Pattern EP is free to download at http://bartonstink.bandcamp.com/ so are all the other tracks she has up right now. She is currently working on an album called Mouth-Breath Ad Nauseum and expect an official website soon! For now go check her out at: http://www.myspace.com/bartonstink
Music video for “Love Who” by Heidi Barton Stink. Shot on February 19th, 2010 at Bedlam Theater. Directed by Dan Huiting.
