33 fans
By the time the bass drops, it’s too late—good luck escaping BAHA BANK$’ grasp. Her songs jolt like pogo-sticks and exude a sensual swagger you can practically smell. This is music that shakes the speakers and makes your cheeks blush. It’s for the girls “getting ready and getting wild tonight,” she declares. Move aside Latto, Cardi B, Flo Milli—in a rap world where sultry, spirited women are rising to the forefront, BAHA BANK$ is here to seize the crown. This year, she’s gearing up for the follow-up to her tantalizingly bouncy 2021 debut, Big Bank.
Raised in Chicago, BAHA’s music has inspired a legion of local women to make sex-positive bangers. “We were ridiculed, we were told we had to compete with the men,” she reflected. “I made it okay to be a woman and make music.” She’s a lifelong artist, a skilled instrumentalist who played piano and alto sax and sang in the citywide choir as a child. She’s also a passionate performer, with a history of acting in commercials and playing in her school musical theater.
Now she’s racked up millions of streams, moving beyond her city and ready to set the wider music scene ablaze. Everything exploded after she tried out the #Casanova challenge, going viral, spawning radio, TV, and magazine interviews, and even being invited to feature on a song by Casanova himself. She’s collaborated with Chance the Rapper on the pulsing bass-barrage of “Shake Dat A$$” and performed at the Lyrical Lemonade festival alongside artists like A$AP Rocky and Lil Baby. Tyler Perry Studios is using her music on its #1 Netflix show Beauty in Black.
There’s a thrilling split-personality aspect to BAHA’s riotous artistic world. At one point in her life, she won awards for robotics and earned college degrees in dentistry and sustainable property. She worked bottle service and bartended at the strip club while taking college classes. Listening to the firestorms of low end and licentious lyrics in her music, you can’t see the nerd under the surface. All-powerful on the mic, with flows that caress and intoxicate the ears, she’s a superheroine with the special ability to make you bop your brain and shake that ass.
Though BAHA only started rapping in college, her giddy charisma was built for stardom. She grew up listening to Demi Lovato and Hannah Montana and has an innate sense for earworm hooks in rap and pop. In a landscape dominated by punch-in freestylers and too-clouted-to-care cool kids, the way BAHA BANK$ carefully writes and crafts every delirious vocal turn sets her apart. Her music knows no bounds now: she wants to make anything “you can dance to.” Everyone is invited to the queendom of BAHA BANK$, just leave your inhibitions at the door.
