The enigmatic artist plants ideas for growth and healing through her gender-forward music.
In the soil of Minnesota’s blooming music scene, there’s a voice that resonates with soulful melodies and poetic narratives—a voice that belongs to Ricki Monique. As a musician, organizer, and visionary, Ricki has become a beacon of creativity and empowerment, using her art to foster connection and healing within her community.
For Ricki, music has always been a form of self-expression and liberation. It helped that, as a child, her parents continually watered her curiosity. From dance theater to learning to sew to doing nail sets on the block for her homegirls, her parents allowed her to experiment with things she was interested in. “All of those things I was able to explore because my parents genuinely invested in [my interests],” the IMMORTAL rapper reveals. “[There are] a lot of things I’ve learned to do through that experience. And all of that kind of feeds into how I create now.”
Her parents’ actions led to her beginning her musical journey, defined by authentic vulnerability and a mix of varying styles. In Ricki’s music, the gentle melodies of neo-soul crash against empowering pleas of liberation, enriched by references to literature and science. Her debut track, “Always Knew,” featuring jazz vocalist and local legend Thomasina Petrus, marked her start in 2019. She had no clue that three years later, her free-spirited approach to music would get her a cosign from Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter SZA, who shared Ricki’s visual for “IMMORTAL” in an Instagram story. The same year, she performed at Afropunk Minneapolis on a bill featuring Ari Lennox.
“It is very important to affirm Black folks and our culture.”
What sets Ricki’s music apart is her ability to create immersive sonic landscapes that feel like a blend of the past, present, and future. “I think it is very important to affirm Black folks and our culture. And a big part of our culture is oral,” says the Twin Cities-based musician. “Speaking about the past, the present, and how those affect the future is a big part of my work,” she adds. The musical artist feels that saying things out of her mouth aids in bringing awareness to history at large and people’s unique experiences. Tracks like “Pink Posture” and “Sow” serve as portals to a world where timelessness collides with the personal for a symphony of rhythm and melody. “Just to let it out / word of mouth can break every chain,” she raps on the latter song from her debut EP Good Seeds.
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Being a public school teacher brings a unique perspective to Ricki’s music and creativity. “My biggest flex is that I build a world within the classroom,” she says. Monique co-founded Tangible Collective, a Minnesota-based artist collective created for Black millennials to heal, affirm, and build community through self-expression. She believes understanding your place in a broader community starts with your early years at school. In her mind, the right teacher creates a garden to exchange ideas and allows students to understand that they can be a sunflower, a rose, water, or fertilizer working individually but also together for the overall benefit of collective space. “We all have the things that we’re good at, and we all have the things that we’re not good at, so how do we build this world together?” the multi-hyphenate posits.
“A big part of growing into womanhood has been overcoming shame around not always feeling like what popular culture is telling me that I’m supposed to feel like as a Black woman,” Monique reveals. “I don’t always feel powerful. I don’t always feel strong. I don’t always feel confident. I don’t always feel like a diva or a bad b***h.” Through her music, Ricki confronts the complexities of Black womanhood with unflinching honesty, addressing topics often overlooked in mainstream media, such as the intersection of race and femininity. Songs in Ricki’s catalog, like “FTG” (For The Girls), are essential because they are anthems of resilience and solidarity.
In creating music about Black womanhood, the 20-something wonders what it would look like to create something that encompasses the pressures of being a woman while still affirming that Black women can simply exist and find joy in the moments. Ricki wants women to know they are not alone in the vulnerable moments when they are insecure about their appearances or dealing with complicated relationships or financial issues. “That’s not a thing to be ashamed of,” she says. “That’s actually something that we all are experiencing, and nobody’s really talking about it. My practice is sometimes to say the things that are uncomfortable that no one else is saying in order to feel liberated in [my] skin and feel inspired to keep doing great things, [other women need that too].”
“You lose what makes you special when you stop dreaming.”
At the heart of Ricki’s artistic vision lies a deep commitment to community care and the power of collective dreaming. “I think you lose what makes you special when you stop dreaming,” she says. “The world we live in is literally created to make us stop dreaming and make us [believe our circumstances are just] how it is, and we just have to deal. For me, a big part of my sets and how I create music are all dreams, specifically the actual curation [of them].” Ricki seeks to inspire others to dream bigger and love deeper through her music and activism.
Ricki’s musical journey is shaped by diverse influences, ranging from the poetic wisdom of Maya Angelou to the boundary-pushing creativity of Willow Smith. But most importantly, the community building of rapper and activist Noname and the literature of Toni Morrison are seeped into her work. “[Both women] inspire me to be specific about [my] writing,” she shares. “No audience or love is lost [when you are] specific. The artists I love the most are very specific about what they’re talking about, and the girls who get it get it, and the girls who don’t, they just don’t.”
“I want to . . . hopefully be a model for others I’m in community with.”
As Ricki continues to plant the seeds for herself within the music industry, her future shines bright with promise and possibility. “As somebody who [is] an individual artist doing community work, it has a big effect on how I view my own career and creativity,” she affirms. “There are people who have known me before I was making music, and I feel a bit of responsibility to them. The work I’m creating isn’t just about me wanting to be [famous]. I want to express myself, feel free, and hopefully be a model for others I’m in community with.”
With each new song, Ricki invites us to join her on a journey of self-discovery and transformation—a journey where every voice is heard and every dream is cherished.
In a world that often feels divided and uncertain, Ricki Monique’s music serves as a reminder of the power of community, creativity, and compassion. Through her art, she invites us to imagine a world where love, empathy, and understanding reign supreme—a world where it’s possible for anything to grow.
