By Nigel Parry, Downtown St. Paul Voice—In recent years, internationally acclaimed artist and Lowertown resident Desdamona has been working to inspire the next generation of poets and hip-hop and spoken-word artists by sharing her artform in a variety of settings, from schools to prisons.

“I do a lot of teaching,” said Desdamona, who is a vocal promoter of her neighborhood. “I work with a couple of organizations that bring artists into community situations.”

Life as an independent artist can be a challenge, but she’s persevered for more than two decades. She released her first album, “The Ledge,” in 2005, and her second, “The Source,” in 2007. That album reached number 10 on the hip-hop charts. It was recorded at Fuzzy Slippers studio, a record label based in the Union Depot until 2012. The studio also cut many other definitive recordings for regional independent artists, including the 100-voice-strong Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir. Desdamona’s 2009 spoken-word album “Inkling” was also recorded there.

Desdamona frequently collaborates with Twin Cities beatboxer Carnage the Executioner. On “The Source,” the duo performed the first track, “Infinity.” In 2005, they formed Ill Chemistry and were noted as a rising hip-hop group at the 2007 Minnesota Music Awards, releasing a self-titled album in 2012. “The Source’s” politically insightful, smokily delivered lyrics and groove did not escape the notice of the local music scene—which had already awarded Desdamona five consecutive Minnesota Music Awards for “Best Spoken Word Artist”—or hip-hop fans around the world.

The album spurred a small revolution with its spoken word poem “Too Big For My Skin.” It went viral and became a rallying cry for an international movement that decries body-shaming and promotes positive images of women in the media. In the song, her mother says:

Tell them, a body, just can’t hold all this beauty
Tell them, they only wish they had hills and valleys like the Earth
They can criticize, but they will never give birth
to the love that rests in your breast
They will never see the life in your hands
And you can never, expect them to understand
Too big for your skin she says, too big for this Earth
Too big for anyone to ever to determine your worth…

Desdamona is cofounder of the B-Girl Be festival, the first arts festival in the world dedicated to the contributions of women in hip-hop and unashamedly celebrating hip-hop’s girl power in every discipline, including video, photography, painting, sculpture and textiles—as well as live performances. On her 2016 album, “No Man’s Land,” Desdamona invited fellow female artists to collaborate in a project imagining an alternate reality in which woman were the dominant force in hip-hop music.

“It was set in a kind of parallel universe where that reversal is never articulated explicitly but that’s clearly what’s going on,” she said. “What’s left is the question: ‘What would women have to say in that reality?’”

Reviler, a Twin Cities based online music site that just celebrated its first decade, reviewed the album and offered this praise: “Desdamona was all about smashing the patriarchy rule of hip-hop ever since she started… All this time, she proved a point, whether you took stock in that belief or not; she is equal or better than them. You as a listener might tire of listening to her say it over and over, but Des says it to suspend or delete the belief from your mind state that there’s a separate category for emcees of different genders. It’s a sentiment echoed by Jean Grae, Psalm One, Apani and countless others who operate in a field dominated by men.”

Desdamona is currently planning a follow-up to the album.

“It’s going to be a kind of part two to ‘No Man’s Land,’” she said. “I’ve been writing some poetry and have a number of concepts and songs floating around my head and on my computer. The second project will also feature women artists, not just from the Twin Cities but from around the world.”

In a nod to the first album’s science fiction component, Desdamona laughs as she wonders aloud whether the second album “should be set in the future or if I should take it off the earth entirely.”

Desdamona has performed as near as Mears Park and as far away as France and Germany, and has opened for some of America’s most distinguished hip-hop, soul, R&B and funk artists, including Wyclef Jean, GURU, Bahamadia, Zap Mama, Black Uhuru/Sly & Robbie, Saul Williams, Ursula Rucker and KRS ONE, as well as many local artists, including Brother Ali.

When not on the road, she enjoys life in Lowertown. Born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa and a resident of the Twin Cities since 1995, she moved to the Crane-Ordway building in 2008.

“Initially it was about the building, the apartment layout,” she said. “I’d been to Lowertown before—to the St. Paul Farmers’ Market, the Black Dog Cafe, and other places—but it was only after I had moved here that I found out how amazing the neighborhood was.”

Desdamona repeatedly mentioned the open and welcoming nature of people in the neighborhood.

“I’d lived all over the Twin Cities metro area and suburbs but this was the first time I felt such a sense of community,” she said. “It’s a small town inside a larger city, and there’s a different thing happening here. Walking into a cafe, everyone who lives here is sitting around a big table and just chatting. There’re people you recognize. Artist Ta-coumba Aiken lives down the street, and there’s so many artists in the neighborhood. It just felt so amazing. I had never experienced that living anywhere else in the Twin Cities.”

The neighborhood, she said, has taught her to focus more on relationships. “Lowertown is a reminder to be social,” she said. “Don’t be in a rush to be anywhere and don’t be in such a rush that you haven’t got time to stop and talk. I always leave half an hour earlier to get to places because I know I’m going to meet people on the way.”

Desdamona’s music can be found at desdamona.bandcamp.com.