RuPaul Andre Charles is an American drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model. Best known for producing, hosting, and judging the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race, he has received several accolades, including 12 Primetime Emmy Awards, three GLAAD Media Awards, a Critics' Choice Television Award, two Billboard Music Awards, and a Tony Award. He has been dubbed the "Queen of Drag".
Hyperdub is a British, London-based electronic music record label and former webzine, founded by Steve Goodman, a.k.a. Kode9. The label was formed in 2004, and grew out of the UK's early dubstep scene. Artists signed to the label have included Burial, Cooly G, Dean Blunt, DJ Rashad, DVA, Fatima Al Qadiri, Ikonika, Jessy Lanza, Klein, Laurel Halo and Zomby.
William Emmanuel Bevan, known by his recording alias Burial, is a British electronic musician from South London. Initially remaining anonymous, Burial became the first artist signed to Kode9's electronic label Hyperdub in 2005. He won acclaim the following year for his self-titled debut album, an influential release in the UK's dubstep scene which showcased a dark, emotive take on UK rave music styles such as UK garage and 2-step; it was named the album of the year by The Wire. Burial's second album, Untrue, was released to further critical acclaim in 2007.
Steve Goodman, known as Kode9 is a Scottish electronic music artist, DJ, and founder of the Hyperdub record label. He was one of the founding members of the early dubstep scene with his late collaborator The Spaceape. He has released four full-length albums: 2006's Memories of the Future and 2011's Black Sun, Nothing (2015), Escapology and Astro-Darien (2022).
The women of Kuwait have experienced many progressive changes since the early 20th century. Since then, women have had increased access to education, gained political and economic rights, and financial power. They can serve in the police, military, and as judges in courts. However, women in Kuwait struggle against a patriarchal culture which discriminates against them in several fields. Kuwait's Bedoon (stateless) women are at risk of significant human rights abuses and persecution, Kuwait has the largest number of Bedoon in the entire region.
Samuel Frederick Smith is an English singer and songwriter. In October 2012, they featured on Disclosure's breakthrough single "Latch", which peaked at number eleven on the UK Singles Chart. They were featured on Naughty Boy's "La La La", which became a number one single in May 2013.
Brian Michael Firkus, better known by the stage name Trixie Mattel, is an American drag queen, television personality, and singer-songwriter originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is known for her exaggerated, high-camp style and blend of comedy and acoustic pop. In 2015 she competed on the seventh season of the drag competition RuPaul's Drag Race, where she finished in 6th place. In 2018, she went on to win the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.
Fatima Al Qadiri is a Senegalese-born Kuwaiti musician and conceptual artist.
Zahed Sultan is a multimedia artist, culture producer, filmmaker, and social entrepreneur of Kuwaiti-Indian heritage based in London. He has performed and presented his work internationally. Sultan is particularly known for his live audio-visual-dance performances.
Gagged is an extended play (EP) recorded by American drag queen Violet Chachki, released on June 30, 2015, by Sidecar Records and Producer Entertainment Group. It was made available following her crowning as the winner of the seventh season of the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race. Chachki was inspired to create the record in order to have her own music and visuals for her performances. Consisting of five dance-pop, electronic, and avant-garde tracks, Gagged was released as a digital EP, and was also made available via streaming services. Its lyrics emphasize sexual fetishism and gender identity, based in part on Chachki's personal experience working as a dominatrix's assistant.
Young Death / Nightmarket is the eighth extended play released by William Emmanuel Bevan, an electronic musician known by his stage name Burial, and the 100th release in the catalog of the Hyperdub label. It departs from his previous two extended plays, Kindred (2012) and Rival Dealer (2013), in that it returns to Burial's signature sound consisting of vinyl crackle sounds, rain-filled atmospheres and vocal samples that was on records like Untrue (2007). It is also less dance-based than previous releases by the producer, with the percussion of "Young Death" being submerged by other sounds and "Nightmarket" being devoid of any drum beats.
Brute is the second studio album of Kuwait musician Fatima Al Qadiri. A protest album inspired by events such as the 2015 Baltimore protests and the Ferguson unrest, the album regards the authoritarian power of law enforcement in the United States and the illusion of democracy existing in the western part of the world. Its cover art by Josh Kline, Babok Radboy, and Joerg Lohse is a photograph of one of the "police teletubbies" found in Kline's art piece "Freedom," which was intended to present how civil rights were being destroyed in the 21st century. Brute features samples of the Ferguson protest, an MSNBC report of Occupy Wall Street by Lawrence O'Donnell, and an interview with a former member of the LAPD regarding the power of the police.
Desert Strike is the third extended play of Kuwait musician Fatima Al Qadiri. The record is based on Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (1992), a video game that in turn is based on events of Operation Desert Storm of the Gulf War. As a kid who lived in Kuwait during the Gulf War, Qadiri played the game a year after it took place, which messed with how she remembered experiencing the actual war. Given how dark the game portrayed the Gulf War, she intended the extended play to represent a positive and "innocent" view of it by pairing a palette of childlike sounds with war sound effects. Released on 23 October 2012 by the label Fade To Mind, Desert Strike garnered generally favorable reviews from professional music journalists and landed on Spin magazine's list of the "Best Dance Albums of 2012."
Warn-U is the debut extended play of Kuwait musician Fatima Al Qadiri, released in September 2011 by the label Tri Angle. It was a part of her project Ayshay, which intended to reinterpret Islamic worship music. The EP only consists of Qadiri's falsetto vocals that are processed and altered to create other types of electronic sounds. The EP consists of three original tracks and a "megamix" of all of them by production duo Nguzunguzu.
Genre-Specific Xperience is a project by Kuwait musician Fatima Al Qadiri that serves as her second extended play in her discography. Its intention is to reinterpret five musical genres through audio and visuals: juke, hip hop, dubstep, electronic tropicalia, and what the press release labeled as "‘90s Gregorian trance." The main idea of the project regards what would happen if the "limitations" of a genre were bypassed or altered. The visuals for the tracks were produced by Tabor Robak, Sophia Al-Maria, Ryan Trecartin, Rhett LaRue, Kamau Patton, and production company Thunder Horse. The music videos premiered at New Museum on 21 October 2011, and the extended play itself was released by UNO Records on 25 October to favorable reviews from professional music journalists. A remix record titled GSX Remixes was released in May 2012 and features re-edits of tracks from Genre-Specific Xperience by acts such as Ikonika and DJ Rashad.
Asiatisch is the debut full-length studio album of Kuwaiti musician Fatima Al Qadiri, released by the label Hyperdub on 5 May 2014. The record is about what Qadiri called "Imagined China," an environment of stereotypes about East Asian nations and respective cultures formed in media of the Western world. Thus, it musically derives from sinogrime, a style of grime music that utilizes elements of East Asian music. In representing Asian stereotypes, the album includes digital traditional Chinese and Japanese-styled drum kits and synth presets alongside "scrambled" ancient Chinese poems. One of the main inspirations for Qadiri producing Asiatisch was the making of a "nonsense Mandarin" a cappella version of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U" that would later be the record's opening track.
Klein is a singer-songwriter and producer from South London, England. She released the EP Tommy on UK label Hyperdub in 2017 and has received praise for her albums Lifetime (2019) and Frozen (2020) on her record label ijn inc.
Tommy is an extended play by South London musician Klein, released on 29 September 2017. It is her debut release on Kode9's electronic label Hyperdub. It received acclaim from professional critics. It was named the third best release of 2017 by The Wire.
Venus Nadya Oshun, known professionally as Aja LaBeija, better known mononymously as Aja is an American rapper, reality television personality and drag queen best known for competing on the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and on the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. Aja released her debut EP, In My Feelings, in 2018, followed by her debut studio album, BOX Office, in February 2019. Her second EP, ALL CAPS, was released in June 2019. She released Nail in the Coffin, a Halloween-themed EP, in collaboration with Shilow later that year. She recently starred as a contestant on the third season of Legendary on HBO Max, where she finished in 6th place with the House of LaBeija.
Monira Al Qadiri is a visual artist of Kuwaiti citizenship, who is currently based in Berlin. Her work employs various media, including video, sculptures, installation art and performances. She's had several solo exhibitions, for instance in Haus der Kunst in Munich and Sursock Museum in Beirut. Her works have also been part of group exhibitions in internationally renowned museums, including the Musem of Modern Art in New York and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Recurring themes in Al Qadiri's work are petrostates and gender identity.
