Artist Q&A with Mz Neon (2020):
In the below interview with Mz Neon, she discusses her sound, meaning behind the title of her Queen Hyena series, themes and topics in her music, instruments she plays, other art forms she’s into, her creative and writing process, what performing live means to her, who/what has influenced her, her connection to Beyoncé, Debbie Harry and Sex and the City, and the journey she’s been on ─ from growing up a loner queer kid in the suburbs of Boston, to living in New York City for over a decade and working at style icon Patricia Field’s eponymous boutique while playing in a number of bands; up to now, fully embracing her experience in Los Angeles and officially releasing her debut rap EP series in 2020.
Describe your sound.
My sound is a hybridization of punk rock, hip-hop, industrial, and post-genre dystopia.
Any story or significance behind your EPs being titled Queen Hyena?
Queen hyena is a reference to the female alpha. The hyena species is matriarchal, and the females dominate the males, not only with their demeanor but also with their physical size. Also, female hyenas are famously endowed with a large phallus that looks exactly like a penis; however, it functions as female genitalia. Seems kind of obvious why I relate to that… It's feral and unapologetic; in an under-represented, yet distinctly female way… kinda like me.
What are the underlining themes on your Queen Hyena EPs?
The underlying and overlying themes on my Queen Hyena EPs are varied, but the catalyst was definitely writing “Pussy Stick” (lead single on Vol. 1). I just wanted to rap about authentic situations, stories, and concepts that I’ve experienced; juxtaposed with conceptualized storytelling based on life experiences, quantum realities and spiritual revelations…there’s a lot of esoteric references throughout, some more obvious than others.
“Pussy Stick” (Vol. 1) sets the stage and sort of says where the fuck I'm at…where the fuck I've been…and who the fuck I am. Though I do think the song is a more sophisticated than that, that’s the essential message; a calling card of sorts, encapsulating my paradoxical grit and glamour in a way that I felt kicks this project off most authentically. There's not really much more to read into beyond what the lyrics are, except that I'm saying it… and that's the point basically. Someone needed to do it…so might as well be me.
“Real Hardcore" (Vol. 1) is sort of a dystopian social commentary on consumerism and post-apocalyptic ideological power trips. I've always been somewhat of an intellectual nihilist (I share the same birthday as Nietzsche) and it’s a tongue-in-cheek, yet purposeful take on systematic world collapse. Ironically, it was written a year before things are going the way they are now…however it wasn't too hard to see these things coming.
“So Wrong So Right” (Vol. 1) is about coping with the remnants of my latent Christian guilt through my calling towards a left-hand path self-initiation and deification process. The track’s concept is about the unification between the polarized tropes of good and evil, cosmically unified in the divinity of oneness. I don’t always realize these themes in the moment but many times it becomes sort of a revelation retroactively. In this instance, I was ritualistically undoing the trauma of Christian dogma of my upbringing, while embracing the righteous spirit of my inner beast. The lyrical portrayal of good and evil fucking for the spiritual synthesis and liberation of mankind is a metaphor for my life; as well as a universal truth I believe would co-create a unified spiritual existence, free from the dogmatic and paradoxical constraints on reality.
“Alpha Bitch” (Vol. 1) pretty much says what it is. I’m an only child and a first born male, so I'm genetically an alpha male and I kind of get off on that paradox…the irony being that I never fit that role in society as male and never really had “male privilege" so to speak because I never fit the archetype. Coming into my female self, I feel more empowered and “privileged” than I ever had as a gender nonconforming boy; the wilds of femininity complement me now, whereas they use to be my -perceived- weaknesses. This song also has a lot of esoteric references that I cultivate throughout. It's a dark web of mystery and foreboding excitement. Kind of like a film noir with a dominatrix lead. It plays on the fantasy that my external reality dictates, and sort of fucks with the perceptions people have of me, and exploits them. I take great joy with subverting my own reality of to different degrees…to objectify the notion of objectification itself. It’s about claiming my power from the limitations placed on me from me society or external forces. It took many years to realize just how those very things were the source of all my power all along.
“Cop Fucker” (Vol. 2) is a poetically sadomasochistic odyssey into a world of radically authoritarian BDSM police reform. The concept of “corporal punishment” has long been an innocently escapist role reversal practice in the Dom/Sub community; however, “Cop Fucker” takes this concept further with an extremist, and poetically licensed, all out assault on restitutional justice. It seeks to deliver a thoughtful yet sensational & subversive narrative of political satire; addressing the systematically nefarious legacy of institutional police corruption and bigotry delivered as a sensationalized, sexually exploitative & metaphorically provocative political anthem.
“Be My Bitch” (Vol. 2) is a tongue in cheek subversion of the insidious solicitation and fetishized narratives that various men have projected towards me as a trans woman. I’ve been approached countless times by men with “forced feminization” fantasies that seek me out as a gateway to enabling their submissive desires to be emasculated for pleasure. I worked briefly as a dominatrix in NYC and quickly found this type of clientele to be quite insufferable and objectifying to me as the arbiter of their sexual tokenization of trans women. As someone who overcame and embraced my female identity as a fully integrated person, I felt morally conflicted enabling the fetishized concepts of transgenderism these men internalized… To each their own I suppose, but I genuinely find this type of kink as emblematic of a much deeper inability to integrate their Jungian Anima or the feminine emotional intelligence many heteronormative men (often in positions of power) struggle to synthesize. I believe these emotionally stunted men develop an unhealthy psychosis and attraction to being “women” as a fetish and erroneously conflate this with being trans. This may be somewhat of a generalized hypothesis I’ve concluded through observation…simply put: they weren’t paying me enough to act as their psychologist, which is what I believe they truly need. This song is a retaliatory fantasy taking their projections to a place of permanent consequence to erase the boundary between fantasy, fetish and lived reality; while also evaluating my own perceptive disposition of embodying the “Alpha Bitch” archetype and its own societal trappings.
“Myra Breckinridge” (Vol. 2) is a sort of riffing and balls-to-the-wall song I wrote early on while cultivating my writing style. It's really just a fun, bad girl, bullshit, fuck shit up kind of anthem. The song’s title being a reference to the infamous book by Gore Vidal and subsequent film (starring Raquel Welsh and Mae West) about a transsexual that takes over Hollywood in the 1960s. It utilized aspects of the cut up technique and is a playful & freeform foray of unbridled automatic writing and artistically licensed absurdism.
“Let's Fuck ‘Til the End of Time” (Vol. 2) is somewhat a projection or manifestation of my idealized lover. Lyrically it sounds a lot sluttier than the intent suggests, but it’s simply about invoking a meaningful connection with someone I would want to mesh with completely…in body, soul, and spirit. My sexuality is admittedly one of my most powerful assets, which doesn’t so much reflect the act of sex but the virility and power around sexual energy…similarly to that of the practice of sex magick. I've always had somewhat of a self-defined “virgin-whore complex” which, unlike the male associated “madonna whore complex” is an internal synthesis of the two archetypes of the innocent and sexually liberated woman- which I embody equally in my emotional being. As outwardly untraditional as I seem, I really value traditional ideas of romance and relationships because I never had the (overlooked privilege) of experiencing heteronormative courtship rituals growing up as a queer boy. This song is about expressing my inner longing for a sense of normalcy that I've never had…but I’ll never lose hope nonetheless. It's basically about saving myself conceptually for the man of my dreams.
At face value, it's all about sex and fucking…it's really provocative and it's supposed to evoke the trans dimensional ecstasy of the deepest human sexual connection… Underneath it's about my vulnerability and coming to terms with the ideological concepts of love stemming from the young girl I never got to be. I wouldn’t trade who I am for the world and my experiences and lack there-of have made me the complex person I am today. It’s basically about reclaiming my innocence and my fetish for romantic normalcy.
What instruments do you play on the two EPs?
I play guitar, bass, and synthesizer mainly. I’m a mostly self-taught producer / engineer and I’ve always seen myself like a Brian Eno or Trent Reznor type of musician; who’s practice is more based on experimental ingenuity than traditional aptitude. My technical focus is less on instrumentalism and mainly on production and sound design…that’s where I seek to constantly improve with every project. I've come a long way in my production techniques over the years, from working on a four track with a toy Yamaha sequencer to early PC multitrack software like Cakewalk and Fruity Loops. As my sound continues to grow I would like to continue my technical prowess as a producer but also allow for more collaborations to manifest that may allow me to focus more on my performing and visual artistry.
Can you describe your writing and creative process?
My writing process has really evolved over the years and it kind of reversed in certain regards as to what it used to be. Before I started rapping, lyrics were the very last part of the equation, almost an afterthought. Now lyrics are central to informing the mood, tone, and overall content of a song. It's a process I'm still refining but I seek not to tame it too much in it’s rawness and virility. It's like daemonic possession. Much of my “spark” of inspiration comes from an ethereal force I’ve always felt is beyond the physical plain.
In more concrete terms…musicality is very important to me and production is arguably more important to me than instrumentation. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11 and piano since I was 5. I never got particularly advanced with any instrument per say, I just learned how to play for my own ability and interest sonically. I typically build a song with a beat and add elements as I go…but often I hear fully formed melodies and hooks in my head and I do my best to transcribe these ideas into a recording, which is usually how my writing process starts. It always becomes something totally different along the way and I typically just submit to the process and enable it to unfold. All the songs on the Queen Hyena EPs were written with the ideal of experimentation in mind ─ not being too attached to sounding like any genre in particular but rather sounding like every genre, and no genre at all, simultaneously. I like the term “Post Genre” and these songs on the EPs evolve at various starting points, some musical arrangements that I write lyrics to, some are written first as lyrics or music independent of one another. Sometimes I audition different lyrical arrangements from various compositions until the right flow takes shape. I try not to overthink it too much but I inevitable do once the song starts taking shape. I’m sort of a nihilistic perfectionist. I allow some ideas to self destruct if better ideas present themselves in the process of becoming as perfect as they can be.
I used to sing more, which I do miss somewhat as a rapper. I'd like to work singing back into more of my music going forward. These EPs are an amalgamation of a lot of influences that I've had from my past, juxtaposed with new ideas and concepts, expressing what I’ve never heard before and always wanted to. Part of my approach to making hip-hop was sort of fueled by coming into it from left field. Having my roots firmly planted in the rock, punk and experimental underground, I felt it was a great springboard to just try a genuinely new approach to rap and music in general.
Like I say about most things: I'm everything and nothing; as above so below. I'm a combination of a lot of things and nothing simultaneously…this is wherein my individuality lies; and it’s the thing I've always aimed to cultivate the most. I feel like this series of releases have really come out of so many years of experimentation and soul searching. It's something I know is always evolving and I foresee a lot of continued evolution and crossover potential coming down the line. I've always thought in terms of pop song structure since I've studied music production from an early age. Just as I am rooted in experimentalism, I'm also rooted in pop sensibility.
The EPs are almost entirely produced by me and feature collaborations with the likes of Lydia Lunch, Jennifer Finch from L7, Bruno Coviello of Light Asylum (producer on “So Wrong So Right”), Iron Fitz (producer on “Real Hardcore”, Sylvia Black, and Celeste XXX.
I'm really glad to be in the here and now. I use to romanticize the past, which allowed me to learn the history and dynamics of music and the creation process. As I've come into this more fully realized version of myself artistically, I've embraced the new-ness in culture of the world around me more. I feel genuinely embraced by that culture as well as there is so much inspiring new territory being explored, which I feel hasn’t happened since the 90s. As uncertain as everything is currently in 2020, I think there’s no better time than right now to be creating, incubating and releasing light and innovation into the world.
What does performing live mean to you?
Performing live for me is like a religious experience. It's extra dimensional. It's the only place I feel “normal.” It's the void. It's the light. It's my soul and my universe. I am the embodiment of my own archetype while simultaneously connecting with so many people in such a profound way is like Apotheosis. Performing to me is transcendence in pure form. Everyday activities, like walking down the street and going to the grocery store, I have anxiety around, such as most people do with stage fright. I've always had a sort of displaced feeling in the world that has taken many, many years of intense self-analysis to navigate. I've come a long way, but one thing always remains, and that's performing. It's catharsis. It's true ecstasy. It's my true love. It's my true self. It's a place where I can unleash every aspect of my fragmented spiritual being to its fullest and most integrated ecstasy. When performing I am the beast and the goddess simultaneously. The masculinity and femininity in my being becomes most activated and unified…I believe there is an inherent masculinity in hyper femininity.
Who/what has influenced your artistry (music, style, look, attitude, live performance, etc.)? How would you describe your style/look?
My style is an amalgamation of so many things, yet never one thing in pure form. I was always a subculture variant, instead of being a purist, I was a synthesis of elements of punk, riot grrrl, skinhead, goth, mod, glam rock, etc while defining my individual relationship to subculture… instead if it defining me. I identify with the Dada sentiment of everything and nothing existing simultaneously and making something your own…I always seek to refine myself but always maintain a bit of absurdism and sophisticated whimsy in the process.
My stylistic influences range vastly: From Warhol factory gender variants like Candy Darling & Holly Woodlawn to early 80s death rock and new romantic styles of the Blitz & Batcave, 70s glam, disco pioneers like Bowie, Amanda Lear, Grace Jones, and punk femme fatales like Vivienne Westwood, Soo Catwoman, Nina Hagen & Wendy O Williams. Much of my early style icons were the more conceptualized avant garde post-punk & new wave icons like Klaus Nomi, Adam Ant & Leigh Bowery. Through my transition I began to incorporate a more classic Hollywood femininity like Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth, Mae West & Jayne Mansfield; synthesized with my punk and avant garde sensibilities I had refined over the years. I always loved the hyper femininity of women like Pam Anderson, Lil Kim, the Barbi Twins and Paris Hilton. I take my references from a lot of eras and genres and I really found myself stylistically in the process of discovering and synthesizing all these archetypes into the manifestation of my style today. I never wanted to emulate any one look but rather always sought to find my own look thru the process of inspiration and experimentation. I’m always evolving but I feel like I’ve reached a point of signature consistency that truly feels like my own making.
I'm always getting “better” at make up techniques or this or that…but everything I do aesthetically in my daily routine is completely second nature at this point. There are times that require a lot of effort and preparation for certain looks (mainly for stage and shoots) but largely, my look is purely instinctual at this point. My closet is notoriously disorganized, so probably 90% of my daily looks are just what’s lying around…lol. Part of me just relishes in that chaos, knowing that style is my calling card but also it's not something I'm never attached to. I’ve cultivated my style and made it my own no matter what’s available to me.
Musically my influences are about as vast as my stylistic ones. I grew up at the tail end of the 90s in the alternative music heyday with bands like Marilyn Manson, Hole, Nails Inch Nails, White Zombie, etc. which became a gateway drug to bands like Skinny Puppy, Bauhaus, Throbbing Gristle, The Plasmatics, and Lydia Lunch. Midway through high school I became more and more immersed in the music of other times, specifically early punk, new wave, no wave, and all the experimental sub genres that were coming out of that time period. I also listened to a lot of experimental electronic music and trip-hop around that time as well. I'm kind of an obsessive person when it comes to things that I'm interested in and I became an avid collector of rare and obscure music for the rest of my life, with a focus on first wave punk, new wave, no wave, industrial, electronic body music, acid house, crust punk, oi, metal, j pop, bhangra, exotica, and anything that had a real identity.
I gravitate towards musical acts that are in some way undefinable. Some all-time influences of mine are CRASS, The Plasmatics, Alien Sex Fiend, Executive Slacks, Grace Jones, Yoko Ono, GISM, The Cramps, Action Pact, Nico, Lil’ Kim, Notorious B.I.G., Dead Prez, Pete Shelley, Nina Hagen, Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, Bowie, Atari Teenage Riot, and as bombastic as this may sound…myself.
The closest archetypal combination of females that represent what I'm most about dichotomously would probably be Wendy O. Williams and Grace Jones. I've always embodied a certain feral-ness in the midst of high gloss and glamour. I'm an inherent Luciferian in the sense of darkness and light informing each other. I’m obsessed with glamour and raw-ness simultaneously. The paradox of alluring and frightening is the stratosphere I command. I don’t feel uncomfortable being too much of one or the other, generally speaking. However, as I grow into my female sophistication, I definitely embrace glamour more than ever. Glamour is my coat of arms, just like a studded leather jacket is. I still listen to crusty punk but I've learned to love dinner jazz just the same. Cross pollination is the spice of life and that's always been my ethos when it comes to anything concerning culture or aesthetics.
Outside of music, what are you into?
Interior design has always been a very big passion of mine and its been something I’m working on in the midst of this pandemic. I’ve always had very immersive living environments with very conceptualized design practice. As I moved into a new apartment late last year I’ve been experimenting with expanding upon my interior decoration skills…also as means of set design for content creation like the video for “Cop Fucker”. My aesthetic with interior design is very surrealistic and incorporates elements of many other things like Boudoir and bordello noir aesthetics, mid-century space age, pop art, and nightclub and 70s sci-fi movie sets. I like to create immersive atmospheres in my environments. Creating environments is a passion for me that works into a lot of my work but it's largely something that I do for myself more than anything.
I’ve done oil paintings since I was eight years old, took up darkroom photography in high school, and took art classes at MassArt and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston due to the lack of facilities at my own school in the suburbs. Fine art has cultivated and informed everything I do as a musical and performing artist.
What was it like growing up in Boston?
My connection to Boston really shaped me in a lot of ways. It made me tough. I was a loner queer kid in the suburbs of Boston and while I had a core group of amazing friends, there wasn't really anyone like me. So I ventured out quite a bit and met kids from other towns that were into punk rock, art, queer stuff, weird stuff, etc. I found my tribe within the misfit subcultures that would generally congregate at “the pit” in Harvard Square or “the slab” on Newbury Street. I played in a band as a teenager called Herself. I sang and played keyboard and we were sort of a new-wave infused alt-rock band, which nobody else was really doing at the time. We made a name for ourselves locally, which led to opportunities playing in clubs around town like the Middle East and we eventually won the WBCN Battle of the Bands, which was judged by Dicky Barrett (frontman for Boston ska punk band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones). Dicky really took a liking to us and offered us an opening slot on a mini-college tour, which was honestly pretty lifesaving for me. For the first time my “weirdness” became my asset as a performer and all the bullying and ostracization of my peers seemed to fall by the wayside in the greater scheme of what I was doing. Performing was the only place that I could express my then androgynous queerness in a way that was contextualized to regular people. Even then I was always very extreme for my surroundings, but being in a band kind of made people respect me, at least enough to not fuck with me as much… and I also generally had a lot of older kids in the scene that looked out for me, which I was grateful for. I learned a lot about music and scenes and befriended many older scenesters around town who would sneak me into bars and clubs. I managed to graduate high school early and worked in the city for about a year until I found my path taking me onto New York City.
Can you describe your connection to New York City, how you arrived there, and how it influenced you?
I lived in New York City, Williamsburg specifically, for about 15 years. Prior to that I was commuting from Boston to perform at Luxx night club during the electroclash heyday. I was “discovered’ by Larry Tee from a demo I had made, that was circulating around, and he booked me for a few shows at his club night in Williamsburg, which was still a very desolate and ungentrified part of town at the time.
During high school, I had been commuting to NYC for various gigs, most notably playing CBGB with Herself when I was a sophomore. After my junior year in high school I got accepted to a Parsons School of Art’s summer study program in the East Village and it was there I really fell in love with the downtown culture of New York City. My father, originally from the Dominican Republic, grew up in the Bronx. Prior to this study program me experience in New York was mainly the Bronx and occasionally parts of midtown, or the Statue of Liberty and what not…so it was very different than the culture I got exposed to in the Village that summer. I landed in a dorm on Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue and was immediately drawn to a shop called Patricia Field just down the block, with its impeccably styled mannequins and loud bustling music. I'll never forget the first moment I stepped through the doorway of the legendary store. I saw gender nonconforming glam rockers, silicone pumped transsexuals, and the most eccentric and diverse amalgamation of people I had ever witnessed up to that point. I immediately felt like I had found my tribe and when I returned home to my banal existence of suburban high school, I knew I needed to move to New York.
Less than a month after returning home 9/11 happened. It was just two weeks prior that I had done a detailed life drawing in front of the twin towers for my advanced drawing class at Parsons. I was so devastated but undeterred and I knew that I would be back.
I started working on some demos that were influenced by a lot of the music I was into at the time (such as Suicide, Jesus and Mary Chain, Wire and Fuzzy, obscure new wave B-sides), renamed myself “Neon Music,” and eventually one of the tracks ended up on an electroclash compilation which helped me book more shows in NYC. It was during this time that I was introduced to the main buyer at Patricia Field, named Sushi. Like a fairytale, he offered me a job at Pat’s on the spot and I emphatically accepted. I transitioned out of my retail job at the now defunct Allston Beat on Newbury Street in Boston, got my ducks in a row and moved to New York City in spring 2003, at the age of 19. The rest can be summed up in so many experiences that culminated in what I call developing years.
Working at Patricia Field was a seminal networking hub for me, it’s where I would meet lifelong friends, collaborators and my chosen family. I worked on the sales floor with Amanda Lepore, who was the first real catalyst for me discovering the world of transsexualism. The House of Field was truly a subculture and community like none other. It was the first “scene” I felt really a part of. Pat Field was known throughout the world as a tastemaker of underground New York; yet at that time, queer culture and especially trans culture was nowhere near breaking mainstream. Patricia Field was a segue to the club world and the two overlapped quite a bit. While working at the shop, I was performing at clubs at night (while still underage) until I began working at the clubs as a DJ and a party host. This continued for many years and it was a specifically important time for me because it was during this time that I was cultivating my relationship to my trans identity. I befriended some of the most influential characters of the trans movement; such as, Amanda Lepore, Laverne Cox, Flawless Sabrina, Allanah Starr, Jamie Clayton, and countless drag queens, sex workers, stealth queens, pier queens, and artists of trans experience. My social circle and chosen family came from drastically different subcultures ─ between the ballroom community, the punk and rock world, and avant-garde fashion circuits. Instrumental in all of this, which took years to fully identify, was cultivating my knowledge of the trans experience that would become so relevant for me later on. At the time, and for all of my conscious expression of being, I was a very gender nonconforming individual, which there were very few of us at that time. There wasn't even terminology for such things, it was just called “androgyny” or “gender fuck.” The House of Field was always years ahead of social trends and norms (the namesake behind the shop, Patricia Field was most well known for being the stylist for Sex and the City). High aesthetics merged with DIY elegance, fearless attitudes, and a somewhat elitist brand of individualism, while being the most inclusive space for misfits and outcasts there ever was. You had to earn your stripes in that world (and NYC in general) but doing it in your own way was the ultimate badge of honor ─ something I found as a limitation in the predominantly heteronormative and conformist punk scene at the time.
The uniqueness of all the people in the House is what really drew me to that culture. Every race, sexuality, age, class, and social status was welcome. What was most unique and intriguing for me was the integrated presence of highly, stylistically evolved transsexual beings that were at the center, almost as muses to the creative energy of downtown NYC. This time for me became an extended period of experimentation in my own cultivation of my developing identity. Through the many walks of life I traversed in NYC I befriended many icons and luminaries of the downtown scene such as Kembra Pfahler, Maripol, Nick Zedd, Philly Abe, Theo Kogan, Miss Guy, Lady Bunny, Mistress Formika, Debbie Harry, Lydia Lunch, and for a brief time became Courtney Love’s token punk rock friend while she lived in NYC in the mid-2000s.
My electro pop solo project fizzled out and I went on to form other collective musical projects such as Youthquake and the short-lived industrial-space-rock band, called Sphinx. My DIY stage costumes and experience working as a stylist eventually led me down the path of fashion design, specifically millinery (or hat design). I didn't formally go to college; however, I was curious to take a few design classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT NYC). I enrolled in a millinery course and immediately took to it. Within months I was making extravagant headpieces and Beyoncé became my first client after buying one of my custom facemasks in the window of Pat Fields. I went on to work with Pat extensively on styling projects, most notably on the Sex and the City 2 movie, where I created custom head pieces for Sarah Jessica Parker that were staples of the film. This led to a slew of high-profile design work for numerous stylists and celebrity clients. All the design work I was doing at that time became the priority and filled up my schedule so music became more of a hobby, and the hustle became the focus. I'm passionate about my design work, just like any other art form, but my heart is in performing and I knew there was more for me to accomplish outside of fashion.
As I began transitioning (gradually at first and eventually I started hormone replacement therapy) and my androgynous aesthetic became more and more feminized over time, my world began to shift. I saw the possibilities for everything yet to come, and the openness and validation I was feeling about my journey was like a second coming.
I had romanticized moving to Los Angeles for several years. I was beginning to revert back to a solo project in 2015, from all the bands that I was in peripherally throughout the years in New York, and was getting more and more bookings in LA. I began my transition in late 2016, a few months after I had a gig booked playing guitar with The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at the Hammer Museum and at the Echoplex in LA, and I ended up just staying in the city for almost two months. I booked a slew of solo gigs and got casted for a cameo in season 4 of Transparent, and in the process was in generally high demand in LA during this time…so much so that it made more sense to officially move to Los Angeles. My state of transition in gender at that time welcomed all the change that I felt I needed and was truly ready for. Everything I had learned, experienced, achieved, fucked up, loved, lost, was devastated by, was endlessly inspired by, all the people and all the lessons I learned in my New York life had prepared me for what was next. Prior to this realization, I was feeling there was no escape from the extraordinary, albeit limiting, world I occupied in NYC.
The path I was on during my time in NYC felt endless at times, while I was still on it but once I got off, the pivotable part of my journey there will always remain…New York City seeded me, it stole my innocence and showed me the light of my own truth simultaneously.
How many years have you been in Los Angeles and can you share a little bit about the path you took to get here?
I've been in LA now for three years. Its been the most illuminating time of my life. It took about a year to make the full transition from New York to LA. I was bicoastal for awhile, then I was subletting, and then I was here full-time. Getting settled here was somewhat of a morbid fairytale of sorts. The hand of fate extended to me and opened up so many opportunities, while challenging me to my core, which forced me to grow so much as a person and also as an artist. I was up for the challenge but the overriding feeling I had at this time was like I was in a portal to the next chapter I was entering into, that lovingly welcomed me. It was almost like stepping into the Akashik record or some knowing of myself on a higher plane; an archetype of my evolution as an artist and as a person…and most importantly as a woman.
By the time I was ready to move here I had been extensively visiting, playing shows, and building a community of really tight friends and professional contacts. I ended my longest relationship a few months before I decided to move and almost immediately started dating someone in LA during the period I was bicoastal. I found my way quite quickly and independently of my boyfriend at the time, so much so that we drifted apart and once we split up, I experienced for the first time in my life what it was like to be navigating the dating world as a girl. This was a whole new landscape for me, in a whole new world seemingly as well. Dating as a trans woman has its trappings but for the first time I experienced feeling validated by men as a woman…as opposed to being seen as this “androgynous freak.”
Many of my trans friends from the New York club scene had moved on to become Hollywood actors and executives and were taking the industry by storm. The trans visibility movement was largely and specifically started by many of my peers who I had admired and known very well coming up in NYC (such as Laverne Cox, Zackary Drucker, Trace Lysette, Jamie Clayton, etc.), which was so affirming to the progress being made in mainstream media for trans visibility. I hadn’t admitted it to myself but I made a lot of realizations about where my perceived limitations (around my gender identity) wouldn't allow for mainstream success ─ the type of success I always wanted but never thought possible. For instance, I never even considered acting as a possibility because I'd never seen examples of trans or gender variant people represented in that world authentically…until now.
Bearing witness to the integration of trans identities in Hollywood flipped a switch in my head. Not just because it was my peers spearheading this change, but also that it was now seemingly possible to break into the industry at large. The kind of success and goals oriented around what I really envisioned for myself as a performer never seemed attainable in the past. I felt like there was no place for me in the mainstream and it was very disillusioning for me because, while my ethos are punk rock, I feel that my place is in front of a very large audience and my reach is much more broad than any niche.
Los Angeles, while being a reinvention of sorts, really felt more like a whole new world of possibility for me. It was like I lived an entire life in NYC and had been reincarnated with full memory and accounts of all my past life experiences. Almost like necromancy in a sense. I still felt connected to my family in New York but like it was from another life entirely.
Los Angeles was showing me that the opportunities that I always wanted for myself but didn’t think were attainable, were there for me to take. I continued to perform with my solo synth-pop/Italo disco project while getting settled in LA and released a 12” inch record with a Mexico City Italo Disco label, Disco Success in 2018.
For the first leg of my journey in LA I was organically enjoying the change of pace from NYC and the newness of my own skin. I didn't feel pressured to have to answer to what's next right away but I knew the next thing would be THE thing once it materialized. I experienced a lot of moments of clarity in stepping back and just really coming into my skin. The world felt like my oyster and LA was so open to me that everything just felt like it was happening for a reason. I played a ton of solo shows around town at clubs like Echoplex, The Lash, El Rey Theatre, and various DIY venues. I started a cyber punk band as a side project, called PRINCEST, with my good friend Celeste XXX who I lovingly call my daughter. I met a lot of really talented and incredibly prolific musicians and creators who, comparatively to my experience in New York, were very open in ways that New York culture just wasn't as inclusive, due to its inherent ‘lack culture’ mentality. Nothing against New York but it's definitely more of a "prove your worth for 20 years til you earn it” type of town. It relishes in suffering and crab mentality at its worst. At its best it makes you capable of cutting through the bullshit and owning it anywhere else you go… which is what happened for me here in LA.
In the back of my mind, I wanted to start rapping for some time, but I didn't really know where to start. I didn't know how to transition out of what I was doing already, so I let the thought resonate in my head for awhile. Eventually a producer friend of mine asked me to rap on a song of theirs for a performance that we were working on. After I wrote and recorded my verse, I knew that there was no going back.
In January 2019 I renamed myself Mz Neon, to differentiate from any past musical projects I’ve done, and not to erase them, but to mark a starting point in a new placeholder for me. When I initially chose the name Neon, I chose it in part because it was an androgynous name and I knew subconsciously that I was going to transition at some point. So needless to say, when I transitioned I didn't really have to change my name; however, I was kind of weighed down by the association that I had for that incarnation. It felt like a good time to rebrand for my music and for myself as a person.
I begin working on what was to become the demos for the Queen Hyena catalogue in January 2019, after birthing a demo of “Pussy Stick” in late 2018, which began as pure experimentation, with no expectations, and subsequently became a career defining moment in my life. Not only did this new direction of rapping make sense stylistically, I felt that I was a very adept at rapping naturally and it was a means to express the volumes of experiences and perspectives I had cultivated up to that point. It was the most legitimizing feeling to be able to freely write about my experiences, which I have not ever heard represented in such a way before. The music I was doing prior, while authentic to me at the time, felt like a novelty compared to where this new direction as Mz Neon was taking me. The EP I had in the works as “Neon Music” just completely fell by the wayside once I found this was the way forward for me.
The first year or so in LA was very unstable and I didn't really have a fully functional studio to record in until almost a year into getting here. During the birth and initial writing stages of the (yet to be titled) Queen Hyena material, more housing issues presented instability, which lit a fire under my ass to be as productive as humanly possible during my time at this particular home studio while I was there. Over the next few months I recorded an albums worth of material.
Eventually I settled into my own place while simultaneously working on an extensive stem mastering of my record, which was a very involved process that was more along the lines of post mixing and mastering with some recording intermixed. It was very untraditional but I learned an incredible amount of information and even begin assisting and taking up work as a mastering engineer part-time. To be given that opportunity as a femme and queer person was very validating as it's common for people to make presumptions that I'm not technically inclined and people are often very surprised when they find out I play guitar or do technical engineering of any kind.
The rest of 2019 was spent working on my record and mapping out a release schedule for 2020. The early part of 2020 saw one of the highlights of my performing career in Los Angeles, ironically one week before the world shut down. I was invited to open for Azealia Banks at the Globe Theatre and it was truly a highlight of my performing career thus far. After the pandemic started and during these months to follow, many revelations, opportunities, setbacks, and breakthroughs of varying degrees ensued.
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