When Stormi Maya founded her Los Angeles-based nu-metal band Cinnamon Babe she did so with one goal in mind: to create the kind of ferociously alluring music that had captivated her youth. Gatekeepers and people with pathetically narrow expectations for Black female artists be damned. Every new single establishes her as a formidable new voice who embodies — with every fiber of her being — the volatile spirit of this particular realm of rock.
Like so many teenagers Maya was first touched by alt-rock while navigating the downward spiral of social exploration that is middle school and high school. At home, her mother kept The Cranberries and Linkin Park on heavy rotation, while on her own she fell for the sublime melodrama and combustive rebellion of My Chemical Romance and Paramore. Cue the collective gasps of the predominantly White old guard.
Yet Maya has also spoken extensively on the reverse backlash that came with not listening to the same genres or artists as other kids in her predominantly Black and Hispanic community. While they plugged into Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj she was immersing herself in the sounds of decades past like Van Halen, Aerosmith, Limp Bizkit, and Korn as well as Motown. That taste in music, however innocuous and isolated it appeared to herself, was seen as challenging norms and stereotypes that have continued to follow her to this day.
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From the moment she entered the scene as Cinnamon Babe, she was clear about no longer tip-toeing around other people’s disapproval. Her first two singles “Pure O” and “Messiah” furnaces of face-melting fury and devilish sensuality — but then she dropped the thunderous anthem “Rock ‘N’ Roll Is Black.” After going viral on TikTok, the video managed to enrage enough ignorant people to get her entire account disabled and wiped of content.
But for someone as metal as Maya those kinds of flames only feed her fire. A year later she returned with her debut EP Fatherless, an inflammatory reintroduction ablaze with head-banging and chest-pounding eruptions like its opening track “Bad Dog.” From there she implodes the tiny boxes people keep trying to put her in (“Typecast”) and tears into twisted ex-lovers (“Gaslight”). Her lyricism is barbed and bombastic as she leaps between rageful howls and rapid bars.
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Despite all the vitriol that she’s constantly combating, Cinnamon Babe has already collaborated with quite a few artists whom she shares this space with. For the last two tracks on Fatherless — “Loose” (feat. Banshee) and “The Man” (feat. Otep) — she enlisted two prominent names in the metal scene that like her have faced varying levels of misogyny.
Her latest single is another collaboration, this time with New York City hardcore outfit VRSTY for the guitar grinder “Rain Check.” Another intoxicatingly vehement banger with which to bury all the naysayers under the crush of an ever-rising mountain of rock hits. Balancing this foray into music alongside her work as an actor and model, Maya is taking things slow out of a desire to do things right and on her own time. But fingers crossed she graces us with more barnburners in the near future!
Words: Steven Ward
Visit Cinnamon Babe on her website and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Listen to “Rain Check” (feat. VRSTY) the new single from Cinnamon Babe below!
