Ladybug Mecca (Digable Planets, Brookzill) Talks with Xenia Rubinos for the Talkhouse Music Podcast

After Rubinos wrote a glowing piece about Brookzill's LP for Talkhouse, we knew a podcast was in order.

Ladybug Mecca (Digable Planets, Brookzill) and Xenia Rubinos are genre-mashing, multicultural artists who bring socio-political commentary (and the party) to their music. After Rubinos wrote a glowing piece about Brookzill’s LP for Talkhouse, and we heard that Mecca’s fandom was reciprocal, we knew a Talkhouse Music Podcast was in order. The two sat down to mutually fan out and discuss being the only women in their touring parties, singing to their parents as they were dying, how travel triggers creativity, the difficulty of collaborations, why their early audiences were so white and male, intersectional feminism and so much more. Check it out! Subscribe now on iTunes or Stitcher to stay in the loop on future Talkhouse Podcasts.
— Elia Einhorn, Talkhouse Music Podcast host and producer

This episode was engineered and mixed by Mark Yoshizumi.

Ladybug Mecca is best known for her role in the group Digable Planets. She released her solo album Trip The Light Fantastic in 2005, and teamed up with Prince Paul, Gorila Urbano and Don Newkirk ten years later to form Brookzill, releasing Throwback to the Future in 2016.

Visionary singer and music maker Xenia Rubinos dips in and out of genre and structure to create movingly powerful songs with her O.G. signature sound. Xenia’s powerhouse vocals are at the center of her music which grows from a wide range of influences from R&B to Hip-Hop to jazz all delivered with a soulful punk aura. Pitchfork lauded the radiant singer as “a unique new pop personality” while a profile in The New Yorker described her work as “rhythmically fierce, vocally generous music that slips through the net of any known genre.” Her record, Black Terry Cat, is out now.