Her pink nails matched her eyeshadow and the roses on her flowered shirt, which she wore with cleanish white Converses, Levi’s, and a fifteen-ninety-nine black wig that she didn’t buy on Amazon. In public, Leezy and her bandmate Mark Speer always wear black wigs to keep their private lives private; their third bandmate, DJ, who is bald, wears a big hat and sunglasses. (The trio’s latest album, a collaboration with the Malian singer Vieux Farka Touré, dropped last month.) “You can’t be Beyoncé and go to a festival and watch a show. I can!” she said triumphantly. “I am a completely anonymous human. They’ll hit me, ask me for cigarettes, step on my toes.” She laughed. “Leezy only exists onstage.”
Leezy was headed to the Brooklyn Museum to check out “Figures of Speech,” a retrospective of the work of her friend, the designer Virgil Abloh, who died last year from a rare cardiac cancer while working on the exhibition. “Everything he made was so inspiring,” Leezy said. “I feel like what he’s managed to do is some of the greatest art of my time.”
This story is from the October 10, 2022 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the October 10, 2022 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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