The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.
If 2020 has taught me one lesson, it's this: "Don't wait on what's yours. Just go get it." At 21, Atlanta's record-setting fresh face Mulatto has spent her entire year embodying that lesson.
With her debut album, Queen Of Da Souf,and a relentless run of features, Big Latto has stamped her flag in hip-hop's most influential city at a crucial moment. At a time when women in hip-hop are running laps around the guys without so much as shifting their lace fronts, Latto is finding her footing in the new rap canon with Gold-charting singles, standout freestyles, and cosigns from the likes of Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane and Trina.
As the inaugural winner of the Lifetime reality show The Rap Game and someone who's made music since the age of 10, the personality that Latto brings to her bars is goofy, assertive and steadfast: She chose her stage moniker to purposely flip the derogatory term she was teased with as a child on its head and uses social media hate to fuel her music.
With her burgeoning success coinciding with a global pandemic, Latto's found herself more comfortable in the studio than ever this year. Her Tiny Desk debut is a dispatch from her Queen Of Da Souf throne in Doppler Studios, right next to her crown.
Latto rocks an aqua wig and raps perched from her throne while her violinist Joy Black and keyboardist SK go berserk on "Youngest N Richest." It's not until "He Say She Say" when Latto rises up from her seat to put extra emphasis behind this reminder: "Self-made b****, hell you talkin 'bout? / Yea, I got it out the mud, no handout."
SET LIST
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TINY DESK TEAM
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