A Final Bay Area Show for the ‘Qing’ of the Underground (For Now)

On Sept. 14, Albany’s Ivy Room will play host to the final installment of Queens of the Underground, a monthly event that showcases women and femme hip-hop artists from the Bay Area and beyond.

The evening, envisioned as a continuation of last weekend’s Pride festivities in the East Bay, will be headlined by renowned MC Nitty Scott. The well-traveled Afro-Latina Buddhist queer artist is known for her clever rhyme schemes and poetic critiques of racist and sexist systems. She’s widely recognized for her influence on the next generation of lyricists in the game. 

Saturday’s show, hosted by the East Bay’s Young Shorty Doowop, will also feature a slate of talented wordsmiths and music selectors from the Bay Area and Los Angeles, including AJ, the One, Ray Reck and more.

And on top of everything, the event is going to be the final Bay Area show for beloved local artist Qing Qi.

“I think I’ve given Bay Area stages all that I can give them,” Qing Qi says during a recent phone call, adding, “You’ve got to release some old things to make space for new things.” 

While she’s stepping away from doing shows locally, she’s not going anywhere. She’s still going to live in the Bay, and she plans to continue doing shows outside of the region in effort to spread her name. But Qing Qi, a multitalented creator who starred in last year’s film Donna and Ally, says her main goal is to simply expand her artistry beyond rap.

She’s focused on “genre exploration.” When asked what that sounds like, Qing Qi says, “Sometimes it sounds a little corny,” with a laugh. It’s a process that has left her questioning the art she makes and even her own identity.

Finding out new things about yourself will happen when you write from new angles, as Qing Qi is doing. She tells me she recently completed a song with the ever-creative Casey Cope, where she dips into her poetry bag. 

She hasn’t fully removed herself from spitting frenetic bars over hard-hitting high hats and heavy bass lines. “I still do my classic rap features,” Qing Qi says, adding that she has a song coming out with Hitta Slim and Beeda Weeda. “But I like to sing.”

An evolving artist and a full-time student, Qing Qi says an academic experience earlier this year prompted her to try something new with her creative endeavors.

“I took American musical theater in the spring, and I was like, ‘Oh, this class is going to be so boring,'” says Qing Qi. “And then I realized: This music is so good.” 

Now, she looks at Broadway producers and Disney soundtrack composers and says, “I want to learn how to do that, but I can’t do that if I’m locked into one genre.”

So Qing Qi is on the path to create from an unconfined space. “First it was free the nipple, then it was free the cheeks,” says Qing Qi. “Now it’s free the pen.”

Queens of the Underground founder Megan “Lil MC” Correa says it’s an honor Qing Qi chose her platform for her final Bay Area show for the foreseeable future. “I’m a huge fan of Qing Qi,” says Correa. “I’m a fan of how she uses her space to promote other women, I’m a fan of how she loves to expand [her crew] the Pu Tang Clan to bring out women from all around the Bay Area, and I’m a fan of her sex positivity.”

Correa describes Qing Qi as “unapologetically herself” (although she hates to use that buzzword). “She’s the epitome of the Bay,” says Correa. 

Correa, an educator with Hip-Hop For Change and an MC herself, recently dropped her debut album, Flex Maquina, on Bandcamp, and it’ll hit other platforms the first week of October.

Correa says that after this weekend’s show, the Queens of the Underground event series will take a hiatus before making a return in March with a Women’s History Month show at Fluid 510.     

The final Queens of the Underground event of the year is happening Sept. 14 at the Ivy Room in Albany. Tickets and details here.