Chika: Not Your Gay Lizzo


Plus: Her BPD diagnosis and surviving the internet	View in browser

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Chika on How to Heal

Grammy-nominated rapper and Alabama native, Chika, knows firsthand what it feels like to have the internet beating down your digital doorstep. The 27-year-old briefly announced in 2021 that she was stepping back from music due to the mental toll that parasocial hatred had taken on her.

Chika — otherwise known as Jane Chika Oranika — has since doubled down on her career. Despite facing "cancelation" and being type-caste as hard and guarded, her tracks detail love, healing, and relatable angsts. Stylistically, she demonstrates immense range, with buttery vocals that easily shift from the smooth verses of a soft-spoken poet to the confident flow of a credentialed lyricist. Below, Chika reminds us that this multiplicity is not only an element of her artistry, but a reflection of her humanness.

In this relaunch of the Salty's Cover Stars series, Chika sits down with Black, queer psychologist (and research director of the Algorithmic Bias project!), Shakira Smith, to talk about all things mental health, the internet, and radical vulnerability on the route to healing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Shakira: Let's start with some of the themes of this cover spot. The first one being softness. This idea of vulnerability. What does that mean for you right now?

Chika: I'm actually very relieved that the theme [is softness] and that's what we're aiming for as a creative lens because I remember from my very first shoots and stuff, I used to say, like, "Why are they making me so hard?"

Around the time that I was doing my first-ever shoots and interviews, right before the pandemic (and some during), I was a 21-year-old going into 22, you know? I remembered they just kept giving me, like, Biggie comparisons. And I get it because I lived in New York — not in Brooklyn — but I lived in Portchester. And that's where most people had known me.

So, all of my interviews were there. Then a lot of classic New York photographers who had photographed Biggie had looked at me and were like "Oh, it's a similar muse." And then also, I'm pretty outspoken. I'm dark-skinned. I'm plus-size. I'm clear.

Everyone always was like "Oh, this is the archetype of the woman she is," and they made it out to be this very tough exterior thing. At first, I didn't think it was a problem because I found power in existing in both my masculinity and my femininity, or my toughness and my softness. But then I realized that I was technically, essentially being typecast in a way, and kind of pigeonholed… I didn't realize it was too late…

Shakira: Hindsight..

Chika: Yeah, hindsight is definitely 20-20. It made me start feeling self-conscious about my role in society. Like, am I supposed to show up as this butch-presenting, mean, or outspoken, "I'll tell you off" type of individual? It didn't really lend any credence to my "real self." I'm a Pisces, I'm a softy. Like, that is very much so me. Water signs crying all day over everything and trying to communicate, but having issues with it.

I remember the last shoot I did, actually, I remember asking: "Can y'all make me feel pretty?" I get it — we do wild looks and crazy hair, and all these very androgynous styles mixed with this beautiful makeup but like, "Can I feel like a girl in her mid-20s for once? Instead of the reimagination of the notorious B.I.G.?" Like can you please make me feel soft?

I think other women are just kind of afforded the right to be feminine and soft, and for me it's like, "Oh, let's open her up more." And I'm like, "I wear everything on my sleeve." I've been open!

The internet will take one character flaw as a character indictment.

Shakira: I definitely identify an intentional softness in your music, right? Like, it very much walks a duality of being able to have bars and so forth, and then have these vocals that are so, so soft, too.

Chika: The very essence of what I make is little Chika trying to achieve her dreams. So, I kind of revert back into the girl who's writing in her bedroom, trying to be heard and understood and feeling left out.

Rapping was a sport when I first started falling in love with it. As an observer, I saw people wanting to be the best. And so, of course, you hear the — what is usually attributed to being a masculine trait — the competitive nature, in the rap. But I started singing before I started rapping. And, so, the vulnerability or the openness that I feel while singing is very different from the drive and force behind the rapping. There are still songs that I'm rapping on that are very vulnerable, but I take a very different approach to them.

I feel like if anyone if anyone labels me as like this masculine force then I feel like – It's not a projection… That is a part of me. But it's like, that's what they want me to be only because it's easier to compartmentalize and place me somewhere. Rather than having to, like you said, acknowledge the duality.

And that's my whole existence. Like I'm a walking paradox and I'm okay with that, but it's difficult to navigate the world, I'll say that much.

Shakira: As we're talking about this kind of, like, archetypes of feminine and masculine, I'm thinking about a spoken word piece of yours — "I'm not a flower I'm a tree"? It feels like you might be reconciling that in some way. I'm curious, how do you feel in relation to the artist that wrote that?

Chika: It's really funny because, in recent years, everyone — all of the clinical professionals around me — have been trying to figure out: "What's up with her? What is her thing?" And we haven't landed firmly, but there is high suspicion that I have BPD [borderline personality disorder]. And one of the traits of that is having an "unstable sense of self."

Before the pandemic, it feels like that person — whoever she was… I miss her so much, first of all. But there's been a split, I think, kind of in my psyche where, back then, there was no fear. I wasn't creating from a place of having to watch what I said. I really just was focused on what I said being clear enough so that it conveyed who I was.

I feel like it's really weird that we love to see people heal but we hate to see people broken.

When I look at those old writings and listen to my old poetry, it's like I feel it on such a visceral level. It was just so clean and pure and realistic and authentic to who I am.

Shakira: Right. And for BPD… Having a diagnosis is super helpful for having a common language and finding the right tools. The piece about "unstable sense of self" is so much hand-in- hand with being told what box you have to be in. Having this projection on you. Feeling like, "Okay, well, I've lost my sense of self because I'm only allowed to be here [in this box], but I actually want to be all of the places."

Chika: Yeah, or having one part of yourself amplified and glorified, but when another part comes out, being told it is wrong. When they both existed simultaneously since the beginning of time. And then the internet will take one character flaw as a character indictment. And it becomes not only this one flaw — perceived flaw, whatever — it's like, we'll throw that away, and also everything that you've shown us before. We're throwing it all away because if this exists, then these can't possibly exist.

And so now I'm like: "Who am I?" Where was I when I was writing "Bloom?" I knew who I was. I was stating it.

And so, when you enter into a career field that is reliant on creating a persona, it's not a good place to be for someone with my "neuro-spiciness", as I like to call it.

Click here for the rest of the Q&A

About the Author

Dr. Shakira Smith is a licensed psychologist, scholar, and advocate. She's a farm- and lust- witch, with heavy water- sign placements that influence her visionary, healing, and story works. You can learn more about her therapy approach and practice at shakirasmithphd.com

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