rising artist LEMMONS on creating her debut EP “Like the fruit”
Hannah Lemmons is a singer/songwriter from Denver, Colorado living in Los Angeles. Her debut EP, Like The Fruit, released in October 2022 and is available on all platforms. The EP spans across pop, alt-R&B, hip-hop and soul. She uses her songwriting to imagine better worlds, to assume different characters, and speak honestly about the vicissitudes of life as a Black queer woman. LEMMONS hopes her music will empower people who imagine worlds—those who seek to create impossibilities. She sings in hopes of creating the change she wishes to see in the world.
Maria: How did you get into music? When was the day when you woke up and decided that this is what you wanna do now?
LEMMONS: Well, I've always been very musically inclined. I grew up in a very musical family. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, gospel music, a lot of that. And in addition to that, I played violin when I was younger. But it really wasn't until high school. I had always kind of written songs and stuff like that, but I was always kind of encouraged by my parents to think of it as a way to get a scholarship to a good school. Like, it wasn't even really fully a hobby. It was very much something that's gonna help me get into a good college. So when I was in high school, I started acapella and just really honing my voice and developing that more. Sort of started to realize that singing and writing songs was the thing that brought me the most joy out of everything that I did throughout my life. And then in college, I decided to finally go into music after I graduated.
It was definitely very scary but at that point, I had sort of realized that every other job that I'd ever had in my life, even if it was tolerable, I was kind of miserable in it. Simply because what I wanted to do is to make music and so it's kind of been a slow unfolding over the last I guess, 20 years. But it's definitely something that I sort of always knew in my heart was what I wanted to do, but it just took me a while to sort of make the leap.
“My whole goal in music is to be outside of genre”
Maria: How would you describe the genre of your music?
LEMMONS: This is a tough question for me because still my whole goal in music is to be outside of genre. I want to be a true fusion artist, I blend all of the sounds that I think are wonderful together. Some of my favourite artists or inspirations are definitely Lauryn Hill, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder. And more recent artists that I'm definitely very inspired by is Victoria Monet. But at the same time, I do feel like I have a little bit of a pop girl in me. I have a little bit of a jazz girl in me. So those are genres I'm also drawn to. I feel like the EP probably be neo soul or alternative r&b, that sort of thing.
Maria: What was your creative process like for writing your debut EP?
LEMMONS: To start, it was unintentional almost in a way when I started creating what became like an EP today. I moved to Los Angeles, July of 2020. So sort of a mid pandemic. So when I moved to Los Angeles, I was unemployed, trying to figure out how can I make money off of me?And so I started making songs on Instagram.
A friend of mine reached out to me because he was putting together a short film. And he asked if I could commission a song for it. And I was like, “Yeah, of course!” Honestly, every opportunity that came up like that for me to make money off of selling music – I jumped at it. And from that kind of came “Foot in the Door” which later became the first single on the EP. So from there I kind of realized that I wanted the EP to represent as many different parts of myself as I could fit in it.
I started working on another demo that eventually became “Taurus and Orion”. And for my next song “Narcissism Interlude”, I was thinking a lot about narcissism and vanity throughout the pandemic because I had been really hating myself. I was unemployed and I wasn’t able to meet people. And in that way narcissism was my way of trying to make myself feel better or trying to experiment with the idea that it isn't a toxic thing.
Yes, it can be very toxic, but for me, someone who, does a lot of negative self talk and has like a really scathing inner voice, it felt like a powerful tool to validate myself when I didn't feel validated by the world around me. For anyone, especially, I think, for queer people and for black women.
“For me as a queer black woman. I feel like we’re constantly being told in so many different ways by the zeitgeist that our contributions and our personhood are inherently less valuable than others. And that is something that I feel like a lot of queer people can relate to the idea of trying to express yourself as a way of validating yourself even if the world around you won’t.”
And that way vanity is almost kind of like radical self love, in some ways. So that was kind of my goal in writing narcissism. I wanted it originally to be like a spoken word poem, about this very serious concept, and then when I sat down to write it, it ended up being this this goofy sassy rap and I love that, because it's very much like I'm playing a character. I want to have this type of confidence when I carry myself through this world. And sometimes I do. And that was the real honest action of how I was truly feeling at that time.
So, that was the sort of overarching process for putting it together. And eventually, you know, deciding the order of songs reflected that same sort of narrative, of putting myself out there as an artist, and I'm showing you what I can do. What makes me happy. This technique that makes me joyful, and the type of confidence or range that I can put in my music. And then on top of all of that, the process of growth that is still to come. So, that was like the EP overall. And the title is basically my actual last name in real life, it's Lemmons. And whenever I'm trying to spell to people over the phone or whatever, I'm always like “Yes, like the fruit but with two M's”. So that is kind of where the title came from.
