Rapper isn’t controversial for controversy’s sake
Tokischa says she’s just expressing what she has lived, seen
Dominican rapper Tokischa’s raps — set to trap, dembow and reggaeton beats— are wildly explicit celebrations of sexual freedom, drugs and party culture. Odes, as she says in one song, to “divine filth.”
Her open-book sexuality — she is proudly bisexual, has spoken about her years as a sex worker and recently dressed as a vagina at a major awards show — has made her a queer and feminist icon in the male-dominated world of urbano music. That coupled with her rapid-fire flow, has earned her collaborations with stars including J Balvin and Rosalia.
Tokischa, 26, has, predictably, clashed with conservatives in the Dominican Republic, who have alternatively sought to censor her music videos, jail her for posing in lingerie in front of a religious altar and ban her from performing during the height of the pandemic because of her habit of making out with female fans. But she has also contended with criticism from progressives who have accused her of perpetuating misogynist and even racist stereotypes.
Like the long lineage of female pop provocateurs before her, from Madonna to Lil’ Kim to Cardi B, Tokischa understands that scandal is in no way incompatible with record sales. “The more they try to ban me, the more people want me,” she says.
She also grasps the double standard at play, one in which a male Dominican rapper like El Alfa can rap about sex as crudely as Tokischa does “and nobody says anything about it.”
But what Tokischa would really like people to know is that she isn’t controversial for controversy’s
sake. Her work, she says, is inspired by her own experiences and those of the people around her.
“They say I promote all this bad stuff,” Tokischa said. “But I express what I’ve lived through, what
I’ve seen.”
Take the song “Desacato Escolar,” in which she describes students fighting, smoking weed and having sex at school. “The government got mad at me because I talk about how bad education is in my country,” she said. “They’re like, ‘You’re promoting bad habits.’ But that’s what I used to do in school. That’s what everybody does there.”
Born Tokischa Altagracia Peralta, she spent her childhood shuffling between the homes of various relatives in Santo Domingo Este. Her father was in jail, and her mother left when she was 3 years old to work in the U.S.
as a home health nurse.
From a young age, Tokischa rebelled against the island’s conservative values, cutting school, talking back to teachers and sneaking listens to dembow, which peppers accelerated Jamaican dancehall riddims with slang-heavy, explicit lyrics.
She quickly ascertained that it meant something different to be engaged in such activities as a girl. Her male cousins were given free reign to roam the neighborhood, while she had to sneak out of the house. When her brother discovered her kissing a female friend, he beat her, but when he later got his young girlfriend pregnant, “nobody got mad.”
After high school, where she sought outlets to explore her interest in theater and dance, she entered a dark period that
she refers to now as the “underworld.” She worked at a Fedex call center and often showed up high on cocaine or ecstasy. Eventually, around age 19, she turned to sex work, entering “sugar daddy” relationships with a string of older, drug-addicted men.
Evidence of that phase covers her body. She has the letters LSD inked on her left wrist, a marijuana leaf on her butt cheek and the word “coke” on the inside of her right thigh. Her tattoos contrast with her innocent-looking face — big cheeks, wide eyes, huge smile — and earned her modeling gigs.
A 2016 session with photographer and director Raymi Paulus provided a path out of the underworld. Paulus, who had also found refuge in creativity during his own tumultuous upbringing in a poor neighborhood, had been looking for a musical artist to represent as a manager. He took Tokischa into the studio and produced videos for her that mixed her twerking with his hippiestoner aesthetics. By 2018, Tokischa was moving off hard drugs, and they had released their first hit.
A string of songs including last year’s “Yo No Me Voy Acostar,” in which she raps in her signature coy voice about being high on molly and enjoying the affections of “a little girlfriend who kisses me,” drew the attention of major artists like Bad Bunny, who declared himself a fan.
The international spotlight has been a lot for Tokischa, who had never left the Dominican Republic before last year and who survived the pandemic with income from Only Fans.
When Rosalia reached out and asked her to add a verse to “La Combi Versace,” a song about high fashion for her new album “Motomami,” Tokischa had to go shopping.
“I had never even seen Versace, so how could I write about it?” she said.
But her sudden thrust into the highest echelons of pop music hasn’t been without stumbles.
The Paulus-directed video for “Perra,” Tokischa’s 2021 collaboration with J Balvin, was taken down amid widespread anger over its representations of Afro-carribean women, in particular a scene in which Balvin, a white Colombian, uses a leash to walk two women wearing prosthetics designed to make them look like animals. Some feminists also criticized Tokischa’s rap in the song, in which she compares herself to a dog in heat.
Earlier this year, Tokischa quickly deleted an Instagram post in which she defended Rochy RD, a rapper she has collaborated with who has been charged with paying to have sex with a minor. Tokischa had written that underage girls and boys have always been “hustling for their money.”
Tokischa offered a sort of half-apology after the “Perra” video, telling Rolling Stone: “I’m truly sorry that people felt offended. But at the same time, art is expression.”
She says blowback from the incidents doesn’t bother her and that she doesn’t really care about what anybody thinks about her, “as long as I’m cool with God.”
She knows God might not be pleased with all of her choices, but hopes that he or she would at least understand them. “I live off my sexuality right now at this point,” she said. “I know God doesn’t like it, but he knows I need to hustle and survive.”
One thing is clear: There are many others who love exactly what Tokischa is doing.