Who is Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo?

On one level, she’s a 27-year-old Ithaca native three years deep into a PhD in science and technology studies at Cornell. On another, she’s the voice and mother brain behind her hip-hop, nerd-core alter ego, Sammus.  

In a genre most often identified by its male-dominated bravado, Lumumba-Kasongo seeks to identify and then smash systemic barriers, to redefine what it means to be a young, ambitious African-American woman, hip-hop artist and producer. Take “Nu Black” – off her most recent LP, Prime – that lyrically stamps the following edict onto the foreheads of male suitors: 

“I’ma set the record straight something like a phonograph

It’s gon’ take some work to change the last half of my autograph

I’m a go-getter want a winner for my other half

Don’t get bitter 50/50 he should know the math”

The track plays like her mission statement on relationships, but it’s also a nod to the Nu Black Music Group, a collective of Cornell artists out to, as Lumumba-Kasongo said, “redefine what ‘black’ music is and what we talk about”.

Race, ambition, the rigors of graduate school and, yes, her deep love of videogames (more on that later), are all recurring themes in Sammus’s tracks. It’s part of a larger message, she said recently: to hell with race and gender stereotypes, to being a little different.

“I do feel I have something to say,” she said. “I want to put out that message: that it’s okay to be an African American woman and to talk about things like being nerdy.”

Now a few albums deep – not including a handful of instrumental projects – the rapper-producer is hunkered down on her next project, arguably her most nerdy effort yet: an ode to her hip-hop namesake.

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“Hip hop didn’t really play a big part growing up,” the 2004 Ithaca High School graduate said. “I wasn’t that into it.”

Instead, young Lumumba-Kasongo’s initial musical tastes were – like so many of us – shaped by older siblings. Her brother, Disashi (guitarist for Gym Class Heroes and, going way back, leader of Earl’s Garage) pointed her toward the alternative rock of the era. She subsisted on the likes of Radiohead, Weezer – the Blue Album remains one of her favorites – and the rock offerings from WICB radio. Then came an interest in electronic music, sparked after seeing Daft Punk’s video for “Da Funk”.

“I had this desire to make those sounds,” she said. “In high school, I enjoyed the idea of making music, but I didn’t know how.”

That is, until the release of MTV Music Generator for Sony Playstation. The videogame came disguised as a MIDI interface and allowed users like Lumumba-Kasongo to craft their own beats by dropping in synthesizer and drum samples from the game’s sound library.

For its simplicity, the game did the trick as a creative outlet for Lumumba-Kasongo. Her foray into production blossomed during high school, as she – with help from her brother – tinkered with more legitimate beat software like Reason and cranked out several collections of instrumentals intended for videogames. After graduation, she enrolled at Cornell University and focused on her studies while dabbling with samples. It was after she received her bachelor’s degree and moved to Texas in 2009 for the Teach for America program that she got serious about her music. The desire to create came out of necessity.

Alone in Houston, Lumumba-Kasongo said she grew depressed and needed an outlet from her 9-to-5 gig teaching science and math to grade-school students. A friend put her in touch with an eclectic church that had a network of aspiring artists, and it was there she showed off some of her production skills. Her new network couldn’t believe that Lumumba-Kasongo had crafted the beats.

“They were receptive,” she said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I can start putting words over this.’”

The connection between Lumumba-Kasongo’s production skills and a certain revelation involving an 8-bit heroine was not lost on a friend and newfound fan. 

“You remind me of a character,” the friend told her. 

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The videogame Metroid was released in all its pixelated glory on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. The masked protagonist, Samus, is tasked with destroying both the metroid from the Planet Zebeth and the Mother Brain (read: run around; shoot stuff; don’t die). Complete the game in under five hours and it’s revealed that Samus, despite assumptions, is a woman. 

“People weren’t sure I did the beats,” Lumumba-Kasongo said. That reaction – you did this? – was similar to the gaming community’s when Samus pulled off the mask in the NES classic, she said. It was a no-brainer as a hip-hop handle. Least we mention, Lumumba-Kasongo had grown up on videogames, likely owed her interest in creating music to an MTV-issued sound sketchpad that brought production into her home for roughly $50.

Sammus was generated. 

In 2010, shortly before her two-year stint with Teach for America came to an end and she enrolled in Cornell’s graduate program, Sammus got in front of a mic and put rhymes down over samples from the likes of Dionne Warwick and Curtis Mayfield. The result was a five-song EP, Fly Nerd. She followed up her first official release as producer/rap artist with several singles and beat tapes before dropping her 2012 LP, M’Other Brain. The album’s standouts – the grimy, Hammond-B3-tinged “Mayhem” as well as “Games & Cartoons”, of which she filmed a video – perhaps best reflect Sammus’s sometimes conflicting polarity: her tireless work ethic and cocksure success (“I told you once I’m a fly nerd, yea, I meant it; this semester I’ma grind hard 20 credits”) and a longing to escape to a land of Sonic the Hedgehog slippers and Nintendo games (“We fin to blast off in my apartment, Star Fox never dies until we starvin’”).

Her latest, the LP Prime, was released last summer, crafted in between her demanding Ph.D schedule on student breaks and weekends. 

“Everything was strategically planned,” she said.

By this point, Sammus had somewhat unintentionally found herself a place within the do-it-yourself hip-hop niche, nerdcore, a genre noted for artists like MC Frontalot and Mega Ran – who’s released records themed around the Mega Man series and Playstation classic Final Fantasy VII. 

She received several mentions on reputable hip-hop blogs, some of which honed in on her taste for videogames but more so the shear quality of the tracks on Prime.

“People responded positively to it,” she said. “It’s more personal than M’Other Brain.”

The track “DL” paints a harsh picture of two individuals whose homosexuality is confined to the shadows, hidden away from homophobic family members and hostile neighborhoods, while “Free” takes beat thieves to task for their stinginess:

“Nah I ain’t money hungry

My stomach really growlin’

I’m on my grad school hustle

Tryna be sellin’ my talent”

In October, Sammus performed at Nerdapalooza in Orlando, Fla., a two-day music event for nerdcore fans. She shared the bill with roughly three-dozen acts, including They Might Be Giants, MC Frontalot, Nerf Herder and Green Jelly. On top of Nerdapalooza, she’s performed in Ithaca several times, as well as Washington D.C., Brooklyn and Syracuse.

Her shows in Ithaca became more frequent after reaching out to Ithaca Underground’s Bubba Crumrine last year.

“I told him, ‘You need more hip hop,’” she said. “He was so receptive.” Within a month or two, she was booked for one of Crumrine’s IU shows.

By the time Sammus got in touch, Crumrine had already recognized the need for hip-hop in Ithaca Underground’s community. He just needed a local artist who could help make it happen. 

Sammus was that artist, he said.

“On top of great lyrics that span hard hits on racism, challenges against music industry trends, quirky and fun homage to video games, and even love - but in a way that’s way more real and honest than most emotive tracks,” Crumrine wrote in an email, “she also crafts her own beats and shares many of the DIY ethics we at IU hold so dear. The music is fresh, smart, well-written and it just hooks you. … I feel hip hop has been a missing piece of the puzzle that she’s helped us with.”

On Friday, Feb. 7, she’ll perform at Ithaca’s Haunt on an Ithaca Underground bill that includes the headliner Summer People and supporters BATISTA, 100% Black and Eyukaliptus. The show starts at 9 p.m. – doors open at 8:30 p.m. – with a suggested donation of $10.

She said live performances have come rather naturally.

“That first show was awful, but it’s fun now,” she said. “It’s not supposed to be stressful.”

Taking a page from some of her nerdcore counterparts, Sammus is currently at work on a new 7-track EP themed around her videogame moniker, Metroid: Another M.

Backed by a successful Kickstarter campaign in which she raised more than $4,700 for the upcoming record’s mixing, mastering and art work, Sammus locked herself away for four days last month to hash out beats and begin with lyrics. 

“I’m tackling major themes in the game: my idea of Samus’s childhood as well as the powers in the game,” she said. “This is truly my imagining of Samus. I’ll talk about it in words that I know.”

As for the next level, Sammus said she doesn’t have any specific trajectory as an artist. Unless, of course, an opportunity presents itself.

“If I could, I would go off on tour,” she said, “but it’s not killing me inside.” 

The beats, though, will continue indefinitely. And she’s keeping them to herself. 

“I’m attached to the beats,” she joked. “I’d rather keep them for myself than send it out to someone who butchers it with something stupid.”•