Artists have a responsibility to be honest and vulnerable in their work, rapper and poet Noname said at an event Wednesday.

The event, titled “Existing in Multitudes: Noname,” was hosted by the Georgetown University Lecture Fund. At the event, Chicago-native Fatimah Warner, known professionally as Noname, discussed themes of race, sex and politics as they relate to her personal experience creating music and poetry. The event was moderated by associate professor of African American Studies Zandria Robinson.

Though artists should not feel obligated to share personal experiences with their audiences, they should strive to be genuine and vocal in their work, according to Noname.

“When it comes to our responsibility to talk about black flight and to keep going through — ’cause I mean it’s traumatic to revisit all of this in your work all the time — I don’t think it’s our responsibility to do that necessarily,” Noname said. “But I do think all artists, and particularly black artists, I think it’s crucial for us to be at the very least vulnerable in our music.”

Noname, who first came into prominence for her debut mixtape released in 2016, spoke about her own experience during the production of her debut album, “Room 25.” The album, which was released in Sept. 2018, received widespread critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone deeming Noname one of the best rappers alive.

“Room 25” deals with more serious and personal themes, according to Noname. The increased vulnerability of this album made Noname feel more concerned with public reception, she said.

“With bodies of art, the public, the audience, they decide who you are based on material. That was a struggle for me. I’ve never been in the public eye, so coming into ‘Room 25,’ I definitely came in with expectations based off of what other people were expecting of me,” Noname said. “I wanted to get my point across that I’ve matured, and this music is more serious sonically and lyrically.”

Aside from being in the public eye, another struggle musicians face is the mass consumption of music with little regard for the meaning behind the art, according to Noname.

“When I’m performing or when I’m in a space, and people are just consuming blindly without any sort of deeper — not that you need to sit and have deep analysis — but just even emotionally thinking about what is this person going through that they would write this type of music,” Noname said. “I guess that’s just hip-hop right now. We’re not really taught to engage with hip-hop in a way that’s beyond just consumption.”

Despite this public tendency to focus primarily on blind consumption, Noname continues to emphasize the underlying themes and political commentary behind her music, especially those regarding her own identity, she said.

Her identity as a black woman is something that is deeply important to her, Noname said.

“I’ve only experienced life as black, and then woman, so everything that I think about always comes from blackness first,” Noname said. “I never felt oppressed as a woman in a way that I experienced it being black.”

Given the largely male-dominated spaces within the black community, Noname said that she hopes her music will inspire black women to take on a more active role within their own communities.

“Leadership in the black community, especially in the organizing spaces, they’re romanticized, and a lot of the leadership that we’ve had has predominantly been male,” Noname said. “I hope that black women listening to my music feel empowered to link up with other people around them. I don’t want them to just consume the music and be like this is just for therapy, this is just for when I’m feeling sad. I want it to motivate people to get up and to do something.”

Having found her way into the hip-hop scene through slam poetry, Noname also emphasized the importance of finding a community in art and music.

“What’s very crucial is to just really search and find community or create it yourself,” Noname said. “Music is such a communal act, unless you’re like a genius and you’re one of those people who can just produce a whole thing on their own, but most of us need outside help.”