The Vixen Wants To Show You Exactly What A Chicago Drag Queen Is

There is a bit of a rubric for RuPaul's Drag Race girls. Appear on the show, try to make it as far as you can, release a single (and maybe a video) timed to your release. If it does well enough, release an entire album, usually gay club-ready dance tunes that are light on the lyrics, heavy on the beat. But every once in a while a girl from the show distances herself from that, in an effort to make music. The Vixen is one of those girls.

Released early this morning, the season 10 queen's latest track is titled "Chicago." Here, we talk to her about the song, more music, and raising the bar. Listen to Chicago on all platforms.

So, "Chicago," where did this track come from?

I've been writing this for the past two years, like a verse at a time. I knew with me being on Drag Race and the things that were going to happen, me being a Chicago queen was a very big part of it. Especially because I was one of the very few Chicago-born and raised queens to be on Drag Race and that made my experience unique because I kind of wanted to speak to that. The song, in three parts, describes what my life was like as a kid and not necessarily being bullied but being in a rowdy environment where my brothers and cousins were what I had to rely on. The second verse is me starting to think about activism and having a social studies teacher who made me think outside the box and about what we were taught, and really just opened my eyes to how coloinialism works, especially within the education system.

The third verse is kind of retrospective. It's about me being a South Side kid, but now having a little bit of money and being in my condo uptown in Chicago and all the things that lead to that. You know I say this in the song: "You know I miss my cousins, but I was never allowed to go to their houses because they lived in very bad neighborhoods and my mom knew I wanted to be an artist and had goals."

It was such a hard song to keep under wraps because there were so many instances in the past year where I felt misunderstood and [I wanted to] release it. But right now feels so perfect because I think there's a lot of talk about what a Chicago queen is especially with Soju and Silky. So, I wanted to say, "This is what a Chicago queen is," from someone who grew up in Chicago, and feels like and looks like it. It's probably the most autobiographical song that I'll put out this year.

Sounds like you'll have more music this year ...

Oh yeah! I can't wait. I always try to look for signs for when it's time to put out the next song, but there's definitely more music coming. I have a whole album in the works and hopefully a visual album that goes with it. I want to do something that represents Chicago in a really big way and something that represents the Chicago drag scene. And you know me, I love to make a political statement so I want to get people to think about the humans underneath the makeup when it comes to drag, especially in urban areas and coming up on 50 years of Stonewall/Pride. I think people forget that we have always been at the forefront of that. I want to re-energize that fire.

Thinking about the "humans under the makeup," do you create music from your drag persona or the human beneath it?

Overall, I kind of set out to create music that was The Vixen's persona. But for a song like "Chicago," I really think that I wrote it from the mind of Tony being like, "'all don't understand why Vixen is like that. Vixen is like this because of me." But otherwise it depends on the song.

Tony or Vixen, I've always been an activist and I've always been a person that speaks out about issues. So even if the song is more dance-y, there's always a subversive message that ties back to real issues. Especially when it comes to visuals, I'm going to make sure to flesh out the metaphors so you can see the message.

So for "Chicago," were there any specific musicians you tried to reference? There was something about it that reminded me of the music my parents listened to as I grew up.

The first two verses came really organically and they were a bit raw. I worked with my producer Mike Jones who gave me the beat that allowed me to just stick out. The third verse was such a different mood from the other two that we had to flip the beat and change the tempo because it was coming from me being where I am right now. It reminds me a lot of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Dreams," which people know right now because of Nicki Minaj's "Barbie Dreams." So it kind of had that feel to it.

It's so funny for me to listen to that third verse because it was such a heated verse since it was stuff that's going on for me currently. Som I can hear all of my favorite influences, like imitating Tupac for a second and I can hear me imitating Lin-Manuel Miranda from "Hamilton" for a second.

You also do the thing that any good performer does, which is wink to other viral moments with hidden Easter eggs.

Absolutely. The thing about this song is that it was a chance for me to take all of my experiences on Drag Race and tie them to my real life. So in each verse, I talk about real things I've experienced and then throw in a quote from Drag Race. So I say "Don't fuck with Cracker. Don't fuck with Blair. Don't touch my hair. Don't poke the bear." Or I say, "They poke at us and call it a test, bitch go have your cigarette," which is the Eureka fight. It's taking those phrases that might have been a little misunderstood at the time, and saying this is how we got to that conversation.

I wanted to make something that was authentic enough that my actual brothers could listen to it and enjoy it, but also popular enough that any Drag Race fan could enjoy it at the same time.

What do you feel is the outlook of "drag music" as a category -- being more so music made by people known for doing drag than an actual genre?

I feel like right now, when it comes to drag music, and especially Drag Race music, I feel like the bar is set really low and as long it's dance music, people will accept it. Hopefully I can raise the bar. I'm very big on lyrics, metaphors, and meaning in music. Even with technical difficulty, I like to push myself to rap faster or longer without taking a breath. I want to raise the bar for the standard for what people take to be drag music.

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