ALEMEDA MEETS HER MOMENT

Five years after moving to L.A., the pop-punk singer has an impressive new EP and a gig at the Camp Flog Gnaw festival

- MIKAEL WOOD POP MUSIC CRITIC

"FROM what I've seen online - because I'm chronically online-people are tired of looking at the same thing," the pop-punk artist says.

One of L.A.'s most promising young musicians can trace her career back to the moment she decided to run away from home.

Or did her mom kick her out?

“It’s hard to explain,” Alemeda says.

Growing up in a strict Islamic household in Phoenix, Rahema Alameda — the singer changed the spelling of her stage name to boost her internet searchability — was in constant conflict with her mother over school, religion and the pop music she was all but forbidden from listening to as a kid.

When she was 17, Alemeda recalls, “we got into a huge fight — stuff that had just built up till that moment — and I was like, ‘You know what? I'm leaving.’ Then she did this weird thing where she called the cops on me but also changed the locks and moved to Africa.” She laughs.

“I swore on the Quran that I was never coming back.”

In fact, Alemeda would later go some way toward repairing their relationship: On a recent afternoon, she’s just returned to L.A. from a visit with her family in Arizona.

But seven years after she left home, she takes a philosophical view of her adolescent turmoil.

"If my mom didn't treat me the way she did, I wouldn't have left," says Alemeda, who's now 25.

"And if I'd never left, I would never have gotten signed." That signing was a deal with Top Dawg Entertainment, home to the Grammywinning likes of SZA and Doechii and the label that launched Kendrick Lamar to superstardom. Last week, TDE and Warner Records released "But What the Hell Do I Know," a killer seventrack EP by Alemeda that shows off a bold new voice in Gen Z pop.