A major snowstorm is expected in Brooklyn, but it seems like the animal ambition of the city that experiences onset insomnia may not end. The Music Hall of Williamsburg (closing at the end of 2026) is located on North 6th St., where bands and fans create their own buzz & energy. Anything can happen at this venue, from mayhem to moments of wonder. There've been many great things that have taken place at this Music Hall, some spectacular and others absolutely crazy. As of right now, the crowd is literally shoulder to shoulder along a small stretch of sidewalk out front and all of us are in that odd buzzing state of waiting and wanting for something much larger than another only typical Saturday night to occur.
Suddenly, just as the anticipation of the city begins to line you up, she arrives. Or maybe it's not her. Hard to tell. Looks like Alemeda, but honestly, does it really matter in a moment like this? Upon pulling to park, she has all the attributes of someone to be recognized as a celebrity; she walks like Rick James or the Mary Jane Girls, and exhibits a very laid-back way about her, as though she had all the time in the world. When she first made her entrance, no other noise existed other than that from her (the sound of people walking around, the sound from the city around me), but only in my presence.
She stops. Looks straight ahead. "Bow," she says, not barking it, more like she's giving the crowd this sly look, like, "I own tonight, try to keep up." And then she's gone. Slides past the security detection and vanishes inside, like smoke curling up and out of reach. The rest of us? We're left outside, breathless, trying to recover from whatever just hit us.
So if you were wondering whether tonight was going to matter, there's your answer. The doors haven't even opened, but Alemeda already owns the night. Maybe it was her, maybe it was just the idea of her, that flash of rock 'n' roll myth. Either way, the whole thing feels bigger than a concert, bigger than the crowd. Suddenly, it's not just a show. You're in it now.
Community Chapstick, an art-punk entity living in a three-headed beast, blasted the night open with glitter-smeared, gutter-glam Delaware-bred chaos: angelic vocals collided with punk riffs, rap infused grit, and total mischief. DisKo StarTits owned the stage with liberating lewdness in thigh-high lace up boots, a striped crop top, high cut bottoms midriff exposed, ass cheeks flashing, slinging a red heart shaped bass with positively filthy Dirty Mind bravado. Like Prince, sexually aware in 1980, she balanced provocative, physicality backbends, retroflexions, and her commanding silhouette with a deliberate, confident performance, playing the crowd as much with gestures as with her captivating instrument.
The songs are ferocious to feel, defy, and cunnilingual flair, each tucked between such riotous, explosive raveups as “Loser Boys” and the feral single “NEW FRIEND.” Donovan Burt, who had gone shirtless, shredded on his guitar, snarling the lyrics, “I don’t give a fuck, pussy niggas,” and collapsing on his knees at her feet, while Ebbi’s handlebar mustache and precise drumming grounded the storm. She sang in Spanish, then shouted “Turn the fuck up,” and thanked Alemeda before exiting thirty minutes of unapologetic glam, punk, and spectacle, leaving the room wired for what came next.
Then Rakiyah, the 21st century cosmic R&B princess took the stage, and the room shifted immediately, like stepping into another galaxy. She opened with a soft, deliberate “Hi everybody,” and just like that, the energy leaned in closer. Somewhere behind me, a girl stretched each syllable like taffy and purred, “Girl… you look stunnnning. You look good.” Rakiyah caught it and smiled, drawing everyone in like gravity.
She was like something from a futuristic pop-star with a Y2K aesthetic crossed with an R&B Bratz diva, the beauty in question wore a black bra crop top and high waist bottoms paired with pink fluffy cuffs that shimmered in the light with each step she took. The long silver-blue hair reaching down her chest added softness to her delicate fairy-like body. Every detail, right down to sheer black tights and playful armbands, could be seen from anywhere within the room; they had an equal balance of sweetness and relationship with earth, flirtation and edge.
Musically, she landed somewhere between celestial R&B and rock-tinged grit. Tracks like “Ready or Not (Rock Version)”and “Truthfully” came alive live, each note carried with precise control yet bursting with unfiltered emotion. Her soft and flirtatious yet commanding energy gave off a very intentional tension that felt like an extraterrestrial force refusing to be contained within.) She presented a range of cross-cultural flourishes, bilingual lyricism, and textured/genre-defying music within the first thirty minutes of her performance; you could feel the universe expanding into the space around you. Eva (her regularly repeated robotic alter ego) has been with her throughout each chapter as an extension of the creative evolution of her universe.
Rakiyah didn’t just perform something sexy. Her kind display of nurture resulted in an artistic journey through creativity through tactile and imaginary spaces, which created the fusion of R&B music on top of rock music, blending feminine stylings with rawness, resulting in a place for authenticity from original art forms. As she left, the audience was fulfilled with expectation and excitement, matching the vibe of the evening.
After the opening performances by Rakiyah and Community Chapstick, it was finally time for Alemeda to take the stage in Brooklyn, and at that moment it felt complete. If Alemeda says she still feels like an outsider, who’s going to tell her otherwise? When she finally takes the stage, she doesn’t posture like a pop-rock star. She blinks one-eighty two at the room like she’s slightly shocked it exists for her at all. “You guys… y’all came for me. Damn.”
The violet-and-rose surge of applause of what she describes as Alemeda Army hits her mid-sentence. She laughed in gratitude but also a little disbelievingly. Alemeda grinned in the direction of the cheering crowd as she stated, "I love New York" “Let’s just start with that. I heard y’all are getting a blizzard, so let’s just have one good time before that shit happens. I don’t even know what the fuck that is. I’m from Africa, bro.”
Alemeda, dressed in a studded black tank top and sheer tights, has built a persona around what she calls being “the queen of hate,” but live, it reads less like provocation and more like reclamation. “Hate is a healthy emotion,” she insists. “Don’t let no fake positive ass bitch tell you that it’s not.” The young, ecstatic crowd cheers in agreement, not because they want cruelty, but because they recognize suppression.
This piece of art is provocative, precise, and magnetic in that it creates a space that holds both feral chaos and an acute self-reflective quality. “Stupid Little Bitch” and “1-800-F*CK-YOU” will change the Music Hall to a neon-lit catharsis; the edge of her tongue can cut through anything in Williamsburg. But beneath the snarl of a daughter wrestling with the voice that raised her, there’s something intimate unraveling.
In “Broken Record,” she confronts the ache of being taken for granted. The same cycles of distance, regret, and empty apologies play on repeat until they burn themselves out, while “Not Asking For Much” settles into a moody, slow-burn indie rock-groove that nods to the cadence of “Sex, Drugs, Etc.” by Beach Weather.
But what makes Alemeda compelling isn’t the petty venom and inherited shame being spat back out. Beneath the surface is the truth there. For someone who is now 26 years old, she has no trouble discussing her experience as a young adult and how she has lost sight of herself along the way, and how she did not have the opportunity to be true to herself, but rather how she was the first woman in her family history to claim her own independence. As a Sudanese-Ethiopian, alt-pop rock rebel, she frames independence not as aesthetic rebellion, but as generational rupture. “I’m on a mission to find myself again,” she says, without any unnecessary theatrics.
That’s when the entire alternative-pop rock spectacle snaps into focus. The bite isn’t disruption, it’s reclamation. The sarcasm isn’t cruelty, it’s resistance. Even the “not recommended” survival habits land less like glorification and more like documentation. She’s not glorifying dysfunction coping mechanisms; she’s documenting what her survival costs were to ultimately be able to choose herself.
And so, Before the next song, her voice settles into an even cadence. The snarl that powered the earlier set softens. “I wrote this song about someone I loved very much that went through a really bad drug addiction,” she says, quietly and unadorned. “It affected me so badly. I was so young. I blamed myself for a long time, and I finally got to a point where I don’t anymore. It wasn’t my fault.” Alemeda let’s the silence settle for a beat. “This one’s called “I’m Over It.”
You can feel it. The relief, the release, like she’s finally shaken off something her family carried over. By the end of the night, the question raised by the tour, But Where the Hell Should I Go, feels answered. It feels like the end of a generational curse being broken. She is the voice of a woman who has experienced migration, the burden of expectation, heartbreak, a friend's drug abuse, the loss of her own identity and the reclaiming of herself, and she continues to stand before a room full of twenty-somethings in chunky loafers, urging them to choose themselves.
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