Ever since her breakout eponymous album in 2018, Tommy Genesis has been relatively quiet. Over the years, she’s had collabs with JPEGMAFIA and Charli XCX, but today she returns with a brand new single “Peppermint” that follows news of a forthcoming album.
“Peppermint” finds Genesis in the same candid, evocative territory in which she made a name for herself. It’s both provocative and cool—her delivery a casual and fierce saunter, leaving the listener no time to recover from one eyebrow-raising line to the next. “I’m that bitch that makes fetish rap / I talk a lot of weird shit and they copycat / Lick my dick in circles on my abdomen / They call me Adam, Eve, and Genesis,” she raps during the first verse. She also taps on her dad’s South Indian heritage, rapping “Brown girl / No it’s not a tan.” She said in a past interview, “The fact that I look like my dad [means that] I’m able to represent a whole part of me that would have been otherwise hidden.”
“Peppermint” showcases Genesis 100 percent in her element, subverting the sexual machismo of rap and power dynamics. For the song’s video, Genesis lies in a pool of peppermints and stretches out on a white sports car. In an interview released with the track and new video, Genesis discusses trouble with her labels, finding stable ground with this latest album, and having complete creative control.
When asked about the theme of rebirth in the track, Genesis said, “I think every person has their own power, you know? Everyone has a power and it’s just like ‘how much of it do you want to claim? Like what do you want it to look like and who do you wanna be?’ For me as an artist, I always play with taking the driver’s seat back. I always play with being in control and being super dominant and being really submissive, and even with the hook in peppermint where it’s like ‘I’m the type to take your money, take your soul, I leave no fingerprint.’
For me that’s not about fucking over somebody, it’s about, ‘I know you can’t touch me’ and really just feeling myself, like I can go here, i can go there, and I can decide when I wanna leave and so it’s definitely about power. It’s also about saying whatever the fuck I want, like, I didn’t really plan it, I just sat down and wrote it.”
Watch “Peppermint” below.
