New band of the week: Tommy Genesis (No 104)

Hometown: Vancouver.

The lineup: Tommy Genesis (vocals, music).

The background: Before we even get to the music, we lov Tommy Genesis. For starters, what a great name that is. It sounds like Domo Genesis of Odd Future, our favourite group of the decade. It completely fails to place the musician in question sexually or otherwise, and it has biblical overtones with intimations of religious provocation; of someone keen to challenge assumptions. We love her manga cute/Harajuku couture, or at least its contrast with her music which so graphically alludes to sex and is full of strident self-assertions (“I never met a muthafucker that I need”). Then there’s the sound, which is brittle, harsh and full of cold, futuristic sonics seemingly informed by witch house, postpunk DIY electronica and the chilly clatter of ATL trap. Perhaps there’s something in the water because Genesis, although from Vancouver, records for Awful Records, the Atlantan label renowned for its idiosyncratic approach in challenging the definition of hip hop.

It almost comes as a surprise to realise, beyond the conceptualising, that she’s a flesh and blood person, albeit one with an intriguing backstory. Her dad is from a religious/traditional family in India, and her mum is a “very liberal-minded” Scandinavian, which might explain the interrogative nature of her beliefs. She describes herself variously as a “fetish rapper” and “a playful demon angel baby”, justifying her choice of American Apparel thus: “I like to wear plaid skirts because it’s like walking around with a sign that says, ‘Fuck you I’m young’, and I like to wear crop tops because they’re really comfortable but also slightly provocative. I like combat boots because they make me feel powerful and masculine. I like to look like I could have just walked out of an anime.” She used to be one half of an indie band called Moan and studied gender politics, film and sculpture at college. She has run art galleries in Vancouver and done performance art and poetry readings. If this makes her sound dilettantish, good: it means she won’t be pinned down and fully intends to “[traverse] media as frequently as her own moods”, as Dazed Digital put it. She’s a very internet-age artist. “The internet is my heritage,” she says. “My cultural lens is a blurry, undefined, intimate one.” Despite being signed to Awful, she reminds us of the Odd Future members at the peak of their fluid online polymathy before they got bogged down in record company politics and release dates. Polymorphously perverse, her songs are “about pussy and darkness ... pain, sex, relationships, drugs, boredom and revolt” and are either self-produced or produced by Awful’s father, KeithCharles Spacebar, GODMODEGAME666 and others. There is one mixtape out there – World Vision – with a sequel ready for release and a third on its way. If you like machine-hard futuristic production and glassy, zomboid vocals, you’ll love tracks such as Hate Demon. Shepherd was written “about a girl who broke my heart” and serves as a protean anthem, while Angelina – nominally about la Jolie – veers between the abstract and psychotic with the demented glee of early Tyler, the Creator (“She tell me he gon’ flip me like he flip his cousins back South / But she don’t know that I went from cunt to dick early this month”). Bump (about suburban drug culture) is her minimalist apotheosis, as sparse and terse as Ariana Grande in hell remixed by 1986 Mantronix. Recently, Genesis told Complex magazine she wanted her work to “be something, not be about something”. “In art theory, there’s a concept called phenomenology,” she elaborated. “To me, it’s when you make art that can operate on its own. It’s not something you have to sit there and explain in a critique, but something the viewer can discover. I try to apply this concept to my methodology of music-making. I don’t just want to reference what’s already been made, I want to make something new.” We’re struggling to think of firm antecedents for this music, or too many contemporary reference points, so we’d have to declare ... job done.

The buzz: “Meet the internet’s most rebellious underground rap queen.”

The truth: If Ariana Grande signed to Awful …

Most likely to: Be a sacrificial lamb.

Least likely to: Follow the flock.

What to buy: World Vision 2 will be released by Awful.

File next to: Angel Haze, Kitty Pryde, Future, SpaceGhostPurrp.

Links: soundcloud.com/tommygenesis

Ones to watch: Ta’East, River Tiber, The Hunna, Fifi Rong, In Letter Form.