Brooke Candy

Genre-blurring American singer/rapper Brooke Candy handles hip-hop, pop, and everything in between, jumping between styles since her emergence in the early 2010s. From her early days as a hardcore rapper, she slowly began incorporating bits from the electronic, rock, and pop realms, echoing a wide range of contemporaries including Iggy Azalea, K.-Flay, Charli XCX, and Grimes. Despite scoring a modest hit with 2017 Sia collaboration “Living Out Loud,” she stepped away from the track’s explicit pop direction and reversed course, amplifying the aggression on punk-flavored bursts such as 2018′s “War,” “My Sex,” and “Nuts.” After years of uncertainty and studio changes, Candy issued her official debut full-length, Sexorcism, in 2019.
Candy grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, where she developed an early love of fashion, music, and sharing her artistic statements on various social media outlets. Her own musical career began with an outlandishly stylized video for her late-2012 banger “Das Me,” but by that point she was better known for her cameo appearance in Grimes’ video for her hit single “Genesis.” Candy continued to grow a considerable cult following for her own work, which tended toward hyper-sexual and highly explicit rap songs presented in colorful videos. She stated in multiple interviews that her blunt, irreverent sound was inspired in part by ’90s rapper Lil' Kim as well as her time spent as a stripper.
In 2012, Candy made a guest appearance on Charli XCX’s single “Cloud Aura,” and her own five-track Opulence EP dropped in 2014. The single “Rubber Band Stacks” appeared the following year, showcasing a more pop-oriented direction for the vocalist. She continued with singles “Happy Days,” “Nasty,” and “Changes,” the latter featuring Jack Antonoff (Fun., Bleachers).
In 2017, Candy was set to issue a debut full-length titled Daddy Issues, which was to include her Sia-assisted hit single “Living Out Loud.” However, the album and its pop direction were eventually scrapped and Candy returned to her earlier hardcore, hip-hop-flavored sound. Over the next couple years, she continued to release singles that incorporated rock (“War”), Peaches-style electro (“My Sex”), and experimental electronic (“Oomph”). In the summer of 2019, Candy announced that her official debut would would finally see the light of day that year. Titled Sexorcism, the set included the blushingly explicit “XXXTC” with Charli XCX and Maliibu Miitch, as well as collaborations with Boys Noize, Rico Nasty, Iggy Azalea, and others. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Fred Thomas