Look at that reception!
Oh, man, they love you!
Look at that!
Yeah!
Now, you're a hyph--
you're a multi-hyphenate-- a singer, actor, producer,
director, voice actor--
Bullshitter.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Oh, yeah.
But isn't the idea of being very successful to have
to work less?
Yes.
I mean, some would say it's working harder, not smarter.
Right.
I am a multihyphenate.
I've done so many things--
musician, actress, comedian, director, songwriter.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: And what drives that?
What drives all that? - Oh, creativity.
You know, the need to want to express
myself, taking boredom and--
they say, idleness is the devil's playground.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, yeah.
And I don't ever want to be in the devil's playground.
I just want to have fun.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Yeah, yeah, and you do,
and your work is so powerful.
I mean, I'm so inspired by you.
Thank you.
And you chose your stage name, Nokia,
because the telephone is so indestructible,
and you're indestructible.
I would say so.
It's a Finnish company.
At the time, I was using Obama phones, because we
were just that poor.
Yeah.
So I couldn't call myself Princess Obama Phone.
And I just--
Not the same ring.
No.
I was too young to have a Nokia,
but I chose something with a futurist angle,
because I liked the idea of having something old and new.
And you know, Disney princesses--
all their moms are dead, and my mom's dead,
so I figured, well, let me add a little dead humor
to that as well.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: I love the way you mix it all together.
It's amazing.
We're both-- we're both street kids.
Yes, we are.
You know, I went to the Fresh Air Fund.
I survived the New York City public school system.
[cheering, applause]
How do you use your streetness and your lens of the Latinidad
to do your storytelling?
Oh, well, I was really fortunate to grow up
in an extremely vivid cultural upbringing.
Being Afro-Indigenous was what I was supposed
to do on the weekends.
When my girlfriend was playing Double Dutch and hanging rope,
I was at powwows, just, like, why--
you know, like, I loved my upbringing.
But it's funny, because there's so many intersections
of my childhood.
And there's the public school, being in Jefferson Park
with my friends.
And then, there was the times where I didn't connect
with my friends, where I didn't get to have sneakers,
or wearing lip gloss, that I had to go to ceremonies
or go to the UN to do a performance,
or something of the sort.
But I think that--
no, I'm very street.
I'm very protective.
You know, I was taught to fight with my words, not my hands.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Oh, yeah.
And be vivacious and be protective.
And I am protective of myself and my loved ones.
Yeah, and that comes out in your work.
I mean, I'm such a big fan of your work,
because I feel like I see myself in you, you know,
and it revitalizes me as an older artist, seeing, like,
the young Latinas that have such self-worth
and strength and vivacity, and not afraid
of their power and strength.
[cheering, applause]
Yeah.
I was telling John--
I was telling to the crowd--
there's the camera here, here--
I was telling John earlier that he's one
of my biggest inspirations.
It's him and Martin Lawrence that created my identity.
Yeah.
[cheering, applause]
I feel like Martin Lawrence.
You--
We're about the same height.
We're both short kings.
I'm there, too.
[laughter]
Yeah, like, I watched Freak, Sexaholix,
Spic-O-Rama, Ghetto Klown, you know, like, Jesus Christ.
And they let you watch that inappropriate crap?
Come on. [laughs]
They allowed me to watch it.
It was our household thing.
'Cause when we saw you, we saw ourselves.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
I mean, when I wrote my stuff, I wanted to write it
for all the young Latino kids that weren't seeing themselves
and that they felt invisible.
And I wanted them to feel like I saw them.
That's why I wrote it.
Now, you've got your new EP coming out, right?
It's already out.
Oh, it's already out.
That's OK, everything is misinformed.
But this is about love, right?
This is--
[laughter]
(LAUGHING) How many rumors have you heard about me?
[laughs] - Oh, yeah.
But this is about love, though.
This is the first time you're talking about love.
You've never been this vulnerable before.
No.
Why now?
It was the time.
I was speaking-- I always speak from my heart.
I always speak from a personal experience, you know.
1992 covers my life as a child, growing up,
and all the intersections of my life, from childhood to adult,
you know.
A Girl Cried Red is about my love for rock music.
Everything is Beautiful is a neo-soul jazz album,
with R&B. Everything Sucks kind of had,
like, an ICP affect to it.
It was a little bit more fun.
And this, I stripped it down.
I wanted to sing.
I always say when I emcee, I'm happy, and when I sing,
I'm sad.
Like, when I got the blues, I sang.
So I had the blues.
And I was going to get married in that dress, and I didn't.
And I like using--
AUDIENCE: Aw.
No, it's OK.
This is-- it's OK.
Like, I'm a young woman, and--
I said this to Billboard in The Insider--
I said, everyone is so used to me being the rapper,
the strong woman, the soup-thrower, you know,
the voice of a generation.
But no one has ever heard me or-- and I've never allowed
myself to be that vulnerable.
I don't talk about my personal life online.
So no one would know who I'm dating.
No one knows who I'm talking about.
It's no one I've ever posted publicly.
So someone could have an idea, and they completely
have no idea what's going on.
So I put all of these intricate things
about a failed relationship.
But the takeaway of the project is really that that person
was an intern--
excuse me, that person allowed me to feel love.
They allow me to feel a little something something, you know.
I hadn't dated in, like, five years.
Oh, wow.
And like, I think that I just hooked up
with my childhood sweetheart.
And we had a love tunnel, and it was fabulous.
And I was hot and saucy and sexy, and then scary.
But then--
And then, scary.
[laughter]
And then, we were going to get married,
and it was going to be amazing.
And then, I left because it didn't serve me.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Right.
It didn't serve my high purpose.
And I spoke to God, and God said, get your ass out there.
And I said, OK, and--
but I tell him.
He's listening to the music.
He loves the project. We're still good friends.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: That's beautiful.
We were apart, and--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: I want to go back to that soup thing.
What happened?
What happened in that soup thing?
I've never talked about it publicly.
I'm so-- - Oh, you're kidding.
I'm not kidding.
I don't know if y'all know what happened.
Well, she's going to tell you now.
[laughs]
I've never spoken about it publicly because I--
public attention gets me nervous.
And I was on the-- in front of the metro or in the metro,
and I was like, oh, my god, my name is in the paper.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Because it went viral.
That video went viral.
I still don't realize--
realize that I'm a person of interest.
Like, for me, I'm just Destiny from Harlem.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Well, if you're throwing hot soup
in somebody's face, you're going to be of interest
to a lot of people. - This is what happened.
This is from the horse's mouth.
Before that man started saying slurs,
a group of young men who are, like, on a basketball
team, Black and Latino brothers-- and I
remember thinking, wow, look at kids
getting air, being outside, being healthy, playing sports.
That's a beautiful thing.
You look-- oh, my people.
Oh, look, a young man, being a gentleman.
OK.
And this man came up to the train
and bumped them purposely.
And that was the first thing I seen--
I seen an adult bump a child.
And I thought that was very weird.
And then, when they got off, he drunkenly
just said, these n-words.
And I got up.
And I said, how dare you?
And I just socked him in the eye.
And he called me--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: You punched him first?
Yeah. JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Oh, wow.
So I didn't want to say that.
I didn't want to say that.
I said it on Twitter once, but I
don't want to say that to publications, in case
he tried to sue me.
But you know, I was like, oh, man--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Right.
You got to protect your-- we got some money now.
So that's actually what happened.
There was a whole discourse before the soup.
The soup is what happens very last.
What I say is, you're not about to talk
about Black people like that.
Not in my face.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Right.
I would never-- like, xenophobia
and anti-Blackness-- that makes my skin crawl.
I don't like that.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: And you can't stay
quiet, because if you stay quiet, then
you're kind of guilty.
Well, people stay quiet, because people are crazy.
You don't know what they're capable of.
He could have punched me back.
He could have slapped me.
He could have spit on me.
And I have been punched back before
for standing up for myself.
[laughs] I got really lucky.
Then, he started hurling racial slurs at me.
And when I said what I said, I said to him, very distinctly,
you don't ever talk about people like that.
Don't ever fix your mouth to say something like that.
A whole bunch of men came to my aid.
And it was brothers and-- like, people
just-- it was like this train of New York
just came behind my back.
And these two brothers, they looked at me and said,
we got you, sis.
I said, OK.
And then, everybody-- like, white, Black, polka dot,
red-- was like, you can't talk like that.
That's not OK.
There's white men-- there's white men going,
dude, what's wrong with you?
Are you sick? And--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Don't you love that?
Don't you love when everybody--
It was beautiful!
It was like-- it was a rainbow nation.
And it was so--
You're going to make me cry.
That kind of stuff makes me cry, when we're all together.
It made me cry, because we all collectively
threw him off the train.
It was-- you see the men, they're throwing him--
and then, I had just went to Panera Bread
and got me a butternut squash soup.
And that was my thing.
I used to get me a butternut squash soup and go to Brooklyn
and be a New Yorker.
And I was like, well, shit, I--
excuse me, I'm sorry.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: You can curse here.
This is all right. - Oh, man.
Well--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: They've heard worse.
From me.
He done said racial slurs.
He done got in my face.
He done made a fool of himself.
He about to get this soup, too.
So I just-- I was like, you know what?
I've already punched him.
I've already did that.
That's all off camera.
I remember I went to get my bag,
because I was like, oh, my god, my bag.
And then, I was like, soup.
[laughter]
And without even thinking about it,
without even thinking about it-- it took two seconds.
I swear to god.
It was from 14th Street to the first half of the L train.
So you know that underground tunnel
is, like, extra three minutes.
So it's like, it felt like a long time,
but it was just one train stop.
And it was wild.
And I stand behind that, you know.
I was taught--
I was taught to always--
if you are about something, be about something.
And I would never strike my brother or sister,
unless they provoked me first.
But when it comes to defending Blackness or Latinidad,
being indigenous-- anything, you know, that I am--
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Anybody who's vulnerable.
Yeah. - Absolutely.
And we were just at a point in the time,
like, in society, where that rhetoric was just so-- ugh,
you know.
Right, right.
And I caught that man in his face.
[laughs]
[cheering, applause]
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Because you got it like that.
You got-- she's a poetess, a singer, sensitive,
and she can knock you out.
I mean, you're the perfect woman.
I'm pretty frail, but I would like
to think that I can always-- if a friend is in need,
I can help.
JOHN LEGUIZAMO: Well, I'm a friend in need.
If you ever need me, I got your back.
I love you.
Thank you for coming.
I Love You, But This is Goodbye is available now.