Leikeli47’s upcoming album
Shape Up is one of Uproxx’s
most anticipated hip-hop albums of spring 2022, and the masked MC dropped by
The Tonight Show studio to show why. Wearing a pink Celine sweatshirt with her customary Nike Air Maxes and bandana balaclava, she performed a fiery rendition of the album’s lead single “
Chitty Bang” in a stripped-down set backed by her DJ/hype man, who you may know as former annual “Rap Up” rapper Skillz(!).
The Virginia rapper — Leikeli, not Skillz — took a long and well-deserved break after her last album, 2018’s
Acrylic. She reappeared in the summer of 2020 with “
Zoom,” ostensibly the first single from her comeback album. However, it seemed she wanted to perfect the album in question, heading back to the studio for another year and a half before returning with “Chitty Bang” in January this year. Shortly afterward, she announced the release date for
Shape Up (May 13) with the single “
BITM.” The most recently released single, “
LL Cool J,” continued Leikeli’s tradition of mystery. Now, with the album right around the corner, it’s time to see whether
Shape Up is worth the wait — and judging from the output so far, it should be.
Watch Leikeli47 perform “Chitty Bang” on
The Tonight Show above.
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