To be a household name requires, well, a name. But Fatimah Warner is well on her way without one.<\/p>\n
As Noname, the Chicago rapper and poet \u2014 who comes to The Sylvee on Jan. 26<\/a> \u2014 represents a changing of the guard in hip-hop. Her 2018 debut Room 25<\/em> is jazzy and free-flowing, drawing heavily from her interest in spoken word. Given the quality of her music, you\u2019d think it all came from some divine inspiration. But in reality, Warner was just a teenager googling random stuff.<\/p>\n \u201cI started watching a lot of old Def Poetry Jam videos on YouTube and got really obsessed with it,\u201d she recently told<\/a> The Fader<\/em>. \u201cI was like, This is the most amazing fucking thing I\u2019ve ever seen<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner gravitated to Chicago\u2019s youth poetry scene, where she met a young Chance the Rapper. She featured on his watershed 2013 mixtape Acid Rap<\/em>, a self-released moonshot that propelled Mr. The Rapper to international fame. Much of Noname\u2019s early exposure came from her collaborations with Chance, including an appearance on Saturday Night Live<\/em> in 2016. That same year, she released the mixtape Telefone<\/em>.<\/p>\n The name was meant to be a something of a thesis statement for Noname, who said in 2015<\/a>: \u201cI want my project to be very conversational. I want people to feel like they\u2019re on the phone with me, getting to know me better than a text message or a tweet.\u201d<\/p>\n