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Bunny Rabbit
 "I think the Feminist Review [blog] I read said that I should be shot. It was like a review of the album and whoever had written it said that what I was doing was really anti-feminist and really grotesque. Y'know they called the song Pussy Queen grotesque. And I just kept thinking in my head, 'Are you calling pussy grotesque?' I've definitely gotten a bunch of different reactions about the music."
So says North Brooklyn MC Bunny Rabbit (Melisa Rincon) who along with producer/partner Black Cracker (Celena Glenn) has dropped her debut 'Lovers And Crypts' for the Voodoo-EROS imprint. That 'Lovers And Crypts' in parts sounds not unlike CocoRosie and Metallic Falcons is no coincidence, since Bunny Rabbit counts Bianca and Sierra Casady (CocoRosie, Voodoo-EROS) as her homegirls. Where the Casady sisters merge sometimes-disparate pop sounds to mixed success, 'Lovers And Crypts', though similarly willing to flirt with variety, is even more rooted in beats, sequencing, speak-singing and rap hedonism.
Bunny Rabbit and Black Cracker, while living together in New York City, would often invite neighbourhood friends over to jam, hang out, and have fun. While Black Cracker supplied the beats and mutual friends got their collective groove on, Bunny Rabbit was content to observe. Things changed when she took a turn on the mic.
"Then one night y'know [Black Cracker] was like 'Freestyle'. And then I started talking about a bunny rabbit running around Brooklyn. It was definitely not a good freestyle in a traditional freestyle sense. It definitely didn't rhyme. It had a lot of screams and chanting... really, really, like... weird shit. But I guess it was pretty imaginative so the next day she was like, 'Let's make an album'. And I was like, 'You're crazy'. But I did it anyway. And it was just like this little project that we worked on in the house without ever expecting any of this to happen."
The duo has just finished a four-month tour of the USA and Europe and is already working on the follow up to 'Lovers And Crypts'. Even while Bunny Rabbit visits family in Texas, she and Black Cracker continue to work on songs. "I'm just kinda piecing together things I've been thinking about, from Britney Spears to like, swimming in a lake."
It is certainly less Spears the popstar and more the sometimes-reluctant public figure that functions here as Bunny Rabbit's muse. "I don't know her at all but her whole life is extremely inspiring to me because it's like a crazy performance art piece. I find so much inspiration. And I'm not gonna call her stupid or whatever everybody else says because I'm finding so much inspiration from her life. I really try not to look at art like that.
"I always thought of Bunny Rabbit being like a really alter ego. I mean if you know me in my life, I'm extremely shy and really, like, introverted. And definitely, like, it's me, but it's a very weird, deep, perverted me," she says before correcting herself, "Parts of me, y'know".
At least in the performance sense, the line that separates Rincon and her Bunny Rabbit persona is by now well and truly distorted. "It's actually really blurred in my mind y'know, because to be honest this whole thing happened really fast. And now everybody calls me Bunny. I call myself Bunny. But in the beginning it was like I had started a painting and I was constantly working on it. And now, it's not finished but I guess I have a plan now, more than I did in the beginning."
Lenin Simos
'Lovers And Crypts' is out now on Rogue through Inertia.
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