Naeem only meant to spend six months in Minneapolis. But as he worked on his album Startisha with collaborators including Ryan Olson (Poliça) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), he fell in love with the Twin Cities music community. From 2017 to 2019, the artist formerly known as Spank Rock lived in the Uptown and Whittier neighborhoods of Minneapolis, working through an artistic crossroads and enduring the occasional polar vortex.

Now based in Los Angeles, Naeem will present Startisha’s live premiere at Icehouse on Friday, February 4 as part of the 2022 slate of The Great Northern events. But that’s not all: His return comes with the news of a EP featuring nods to Prince (that Lovesexy-inspired cover art!), cartoonist Charles Schulz, and his Minneapolis friends. The EP’s release date is TBD but impending; the tracklist and cover art are available below.

Hello! You moved from Philly to Minneapolis to LA in the last five years. What were your first impressions of Minneapolis and LA?

I was so surprised that when I got to Minneapolis, it felt a lot like Baltimore to me. Something about it was really familiar — how green it was, and simply the size of the city. Even though there are a lot of differences, it felt like home.

LA's just boring. It's highways and strip malls. I find it to be really uninspiring here. You can find some pretty cool nooks and crannies of LA and make it fun, but the day-to-day here is not tight.

I was really surprised and inspired by the Native American community and the Somali community in Minneapolis — two communities that I did not have on the East Coast. I thought [Minneapolis] was gonna be the whitest city in the world, because that's what everyone says it is. Because it is. [laughs] But at the same time, you have this really beautiful Somali community and culture there. And I think the first week I moved there, the Walker [Art Center] was in all that trouble over the "Scaffold" statue that they acquired, which was supposed to be their brand-new, big bajillion dollar piece. As soon as I got there, it was just protests, and the Native American community coming through, and I was like, “Holy s***, how cool is this?” On the East Coast, we're kind of taught that [Indigenous] people don't exist anymore. They don't have any political power. They're all on reservations. So I was blown away by the political power that they had; the organization.

I mean, the winter’s f***ing brutal. I definitely don’t miss that. But it even got to a point where I was like, “Oh, minus five? Ok, that's cool.”

What feelings come up for you when you're thinking about winter?

It reminded me of one week I had spent in Stockholm during the winter. When you're in Sweden, the sun doesn't come up. It's just snow and darkness. And the winter in Minneapolis brought me back to those moments, where you walk into someone's house and it's only two blocks away, but it feels like hell because it's negative 50, but then you get into that home, and it's so cozy to be with friends. I remember seeing everybody sitting on a floor, way closer than people would be on the East Coast. Feeling each other's warmth.

There's a stillness that the winter brings, because it's so brutal. You step outside, and you can't hear anything. Those were some of my favorite moments, because everything felt so personal. The whole city almost feels like it's yours, because mostly, people are inside. So you get these really weird moments where the snow is glistening. It looks like there's little diamonds in the streets. And it's so dark, and there's no one around for two or three blocks, and it's a solo mission just to get to the bar or get to the grocery store… When I think about it now, I can't even believe that I did that. It feels like a novel in some way. So dreamy, so fictional, you know?

How do you think that setting affected Startisha?

All of the songs were written before I came to Minneapolis, so a lot of the work we were doing was extra production and getting features. We had Velvet Negroni featured on the record. We had Chris Bierden from Poliça playing bass and Justin Vernon singing backups for me. Swamp Dogg hanging out. The city of Minneapolis didn't really have an influence on the writing, but the community of the artists there, and how open they were to collaboration, that's what influenced the record.

When you came here, who were you expecting to work with?

Ryan Olson, who produces for Poliça. I asked him to be executive producer and help me make these songs a little bit grander. Ryan was able to wrangle in these people that I would have never had access to, and it happened organically, because that’s what they did every day.

Were you writing during that time, too, or really focusing on producing Startisha?

Mostly producing Startisha. I was doing some writing, because I had so much free time, but I don't think any of those songs really got finished. But one funny project that did come about, which I'm hoping to put out in the next month or two, was a Minneapolis covers album. When I saw my time running out there, and I knew I was leaving, I was really sad — because I felt so at home, and I didn't want to go to LA. I decided to cover the friends I was working with, as a thank-you and to mark my time there. I chose a song from Fog, which is Andrew Broder's project; Vampire Hands, which is a project Chris Bierden sings in; I did a cover of a Corbin song. And then I also added André Cymone, who's one of Prince's old players, and a Prince song, just for good measure.

You kind of have to include Prince.

It’s the most terrifying thing to do. I'm a huge Prince fan, and any time I hear somebody cover or do a tribute to Prince, I'm like, “Boo.” Like, “Don't touch the god's music.” [laughs] So to actually do it now is really dumb of me, but it happened.

The title is going to be a quote from Charles Schulz. I'm also a massive Peanuts fan. It's the most beautifully written cartoon: so important to me as a kid, growing up. I was at a vintage shop in LA, and this woman had these old Peanuts sweatshirts. One had Charlie Brown in the front, with his baseball cap and his baseball bat dragging on the ground. On the back, it says, 'How can we lose when we're so sincere?' So I'm going to call the EP How Can We Lose When We're So Sincere?

It's crazy, two of the most important artists in my life, Charles Schulz and Prince, these two men that I've been following my whole entire life — to be in that city and to really understand why they could make that music and write those scripts and create those characters — it's so truly Minneapolis-St. Paul. There's something so sweet and so kind about that city and the people there.

You said you had to go to LA. Why?

Because my boyfriend got a job in LA. I was crossing my fingers that if I stayed in Minneapolis, he would be done and want to move back to Philly. But that never happened, so I'm still here in LA.

For some time, at least. We've had this transit between Minneapolis and LA for years. Folks will go out to LA and then move back home, or stay there and visit Minnesota.

I just hope that when people move back home, they don't move back with any embarrassment or sense of failure. I really do think that people should stay in their small towns and affect the community there. In LA and New York, the influence of the fashion and music industries really discourages people from being themselves and being creative.

Like, all my favorite artists are definitely not from LA. The biggest artists, or artists that we love the most, come from really cool places like Houston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philly, Minneapolis. It's always these small towns, never the massive cities.

Have you experienced that pressure from fashion industry and music industry?

Yeah, for sure. When I was in Philly, me and Santigold and Diplo and M.I.A. had this moment of creating a scene. I realized that the next generation, the kids in this next wave, were very, very, very into fame and fashion. It felt to me that what we had created was turning into something that was more becoming more rooted in fashion that it was creativity and music. Image was propelling artists more than the quality of the songs they created.

So how refreshing to move here and meet a lot of people who are so serious about the craft of music.

Yeah. And also, still really cool and very fashionable. I remember the very first day I moved here, there was a party at the Greenroom space on Eat Street. My friend — this artist named Alex Da Corte from Philly — drove me to Minneapolis. We got dinner with Justin [Vernon], and Justin was like, “There's this party. We should go check it out.” We walk in, and my friend Alex looks around the room and goes, "You're gonna be fine here." [laughs] Everybody just looked so cool and so pretty. My very first day in Minneapolis, I didn't feel like I took a step back, culturally. I felt like I took a step forward.

I learned so much from the POC queer community in Minneapolis, really catching me up on a seriousness and a new way to think about being queer; think about being a person of color; representation. These very serious people who were not only presenting themselves as fabulously as they wanted to, but also then protesting against the cops and putting their bodies on the line. I was like, "This is advanced." [laughs] I had so many awesome arguments with a bunch of kids who were 20 years younger than me, really catching me up on a lot of things that I just wasn't aware of or things that I took for granted. I came from a city that felt way more impoverished. Baltimore is a really hard, hard city to come from, so I looked at all the kids in Minneapolis like, "You guys have it made." Everyone was so smart and brilliant. My perspective up against their perspective, and us having arguments, really changed my life and where I am right now.

It's so funny that the year I moved to LA, these massive protests and events happened in Minneapolis that changed the entire world. That happened not because it “just so happened” that George Floyd lived in Minneapolis. It happened because of how brilliant and how dedicated and how hardworking and how rebellious and fierce the children — the kids of Minneapolis — are. It was just so bizarre to me to see all that stuff happening on television and on Twitter, the city that I thought was so perfect and I loved, turning into this battleground that pushed all of America's culture forward. And all of the world's culture forward.

Have you been back since that summer? Have you been back since you left?

No, I haven't been back, because of COVID.

COVID has been pretty rough in Minnesota lately. But you're planning an indoor event. How are you feeling about that?

I took COVID extremely seriously. I have sickle cell anemia, so I didn't know how it was going to affect me. We really went into lockdown. And then LA started opening up a little bit. We felt really safe, but then the variant would come. Omicron is spreading even quicker, so we’re getting rocked again right now. But the way I currently look at it is, we're kind of out of options of what we can do. I got my booster shot as soon as I could. I wear my mask in public. I show my vaccine card, and I wish that everybody did that.

I have family members who refuse to get vaccinated, and it's a bummer that [the pandemic] became so politicized. We had a shot to get ahead of this pandemic for the first time ever — humans actually had a chance to defeat a virus or defeat a pandemic, and we failed miserably at that. So now, we're back to the reality that we're part of nature, and we're not smart enough to beat it yet. We're not organized enough to beat it. Maybe the next pandemic, humans will learn some lessons and be able to organize properly. But right now, I think we just have to protect ourselves the best we can and just live.

Did you want to highlight anything before we wrap up?

I'm currently reading this book of the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu's conversation that happened a few years ago. There's this really cool moment where Desmond Tutu asked the Dalai Lama about his exile from China, because the Chinese government killed a bunch of Tibetans and monks and made him have to flee. Desmond Tutu asked, "Why weren't you sad that you had to leave your country? This place is so dear." And the Dalai Lama says, "Any place that I have friends is my country. And anybody who shows me love is my parent." I've been thinking about that a lot, especially relating that to Minneapolis. Because that year and a half, I felt like I was in my country. I felt like I had all these new parents and all this new parental guidance, because so many people showed me so much love. I made so many friends so quickly. It was a very, very extremely comforting time for me.

Naeem – “How Can We Lose If We’re So Sincere?” track list

“Cockeyed Cookie Pusher” (Written by Fog)
”Fall Creek Boys Choir” (Written by Bon Iver & James Blake)
”Kelly’s Eyes” (Written by André Cymone)
”No Fun” (Written by Vampire Hands)
”Dragged” (Written by Corbin)
”Neon Telephone” (Written by Prince, recorded by Three O'Clock)
”____45_____” (Written by Bon Iver)