Noname Reveals Tracklist for ‘Sundial,’ First Album in Five Years

Noname has long held her third album close, but as its August 11 release approaches, she has shared the 11-song tracklist. She posted a spacey graphic on Instagram, with titles like “Black Mirror,” “Potentially the Interlude,” and “Gospel?” Its features include Common, Jay Electronica, Billy Woods, Eryn Allen Kane, Ayoni, $ilkmoney, and Stout.

A week ago, she announced that the album’s first single, “Balloons,” featuring another rather elusive rapper, Jay Electronica, would be released Friday, June 21. In the caption to her post of the tracklist, she shared that she’d “rather share it with the rest of the album.” When Jay Electronica was revealed to be the single’s guest, Noname was met with criticism online for collaborating with the New Orleans MC, an advocate for the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a known antisemite. Electronica has shared antisemitic sentiments as well.

Some responded online, accusing Noname — who is vocal about racial and economic justice and runs a reading organization to these ends — of being hypocritical. “@noname doesn’t realize that going to bat for an antisemitic rapper runs counter to her entire public persona?” one person wrote on Twitter in response to Noname defending the song by tweeting “I’m good on the selective outrage.” She spent time responding to critics before seemingly deactivating her account. “N-ggas legit rap about actual murder and sexual assault that they commit in real life and y’all can’t take a jay elect verse?” Noname wrote before her account disappeared. “I’ll see y’all when my album drops in a few weeks. Sending love and prayers.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone in 2021, Noname discussed how the public nature of her work and politics affects her and the discourse surrounding her. In 2019, she founded Noname Book Club, which quickly became international and motivated her to open a headquarters that functions as a community center and library in Los Angeles, where she lives. “I could be a better organizer. I could be more anti-capitalist, more anti-imperialist, I could be more active politically in my community,” she said. “I know people feel a specific way when my name comes up because of this journey I’ve been on. Either you hate me or you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, she’s doing such amazing work. Why is she so good?’” she went on. “Neither one of those things are truly honest and who I am.”

When interviewed two years ago, Noname had said her third album was going to be titled Factory Baby and was in its early stages. She envisioned it would be fun and radical, with ideas around the social struggles she often highlights. By December, though, she scrapped the project, writing on Instagram that it was difficult to find producers she connected with sonically. “No lie this sh-t actually makes me incredibly sad and I rarely leave the crib these days,” she wrote. “I don’t want to keep lying and saying there’s an album on the way when there’s not.” At that point, she told Rolling Stone she had made some music with DJ Dahi, who has produced hits for Kendrick Lamar and Drake. “He was very nice,” she said of Dahi. “It was super easy.”

Upon the release of her second album, Room 25, in 2018, Rolling Stone called Noname “one of the best rappers alive.”

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