Rapper Kari Faux returns for concert

She has worked with Donald Glover, has been featured on NPR, in Rolling Stone, and praised by Pitchfork.com, and now Kari Faux returns for a Wednesday show in her hometown of Little Rock.

The rapper-writer-producer, born Kari Rose Johnson, is on her Help Wanted Tour in support of her latest EP, CRY 4 HELP. Her performance is part of the Arkansas Sounds Music Series at Central Arkansas Library System's Ron Robinson Theater.

Faux, a Little Rock Central High School graduate and former Bruno's Little Italy hostess whose mother was a minister, first gained attention nationally after her 2014 track, "No Small Talk," was remixed by Childish Gambino, the hip-hop alter-ego of Glover, and ended up on the soundtrack to the HBO series Insecure. She released her debut album, Lost en Los Angeles, in 2016.

In a 2016 Democrat-Gazette profile of Faux, the record was described as "a playfully mixed journey through slow-spiraling '70s synth laced with jazz riffs, funk horns, trip hop and house beats. There's also '80s electropop, gritty, drawn-out trap and a tinge of an indigenous vibe (hand-drums, percussion). The 11 tracks bring to mind artists as diverse as Gangsta Boo, Erykah Badu, Bjork, Deee-Lite and Digable Planets. It's sunshine, bouncy clubbing meets stubborn aplomb, fading into a smoggy haze of psychedelia and despondency."`

CRY 4 HELP, her second EP, is dark and introspective, with Faux dodging social interaction on "Leave Me Alone" and saying she no longer wants to be medicated on the following track. Over a slinky, minimal beat, she is vividly honest about the trauma of a miscarriage on "Latch Key," the EP's final track.

At Pitchfork.com, writer Khalia Russell says: "CRY 4 HELP is not only a wake-up call to go ahead and face the hurtful things in your life that you may believe you can't, but also a reflection of Kari's extensive growth as an artist and as a woman who has experienced life's many challenges."

Style on 05/21/2019