Gianna Gianna is the kind of shapeshifter who makes genre definitions feel quaint. In the last half‑decade alone, the Los Angeles performance artist has rattled club subs with industrial‑rap ruptures (“Unlocked”), purred over woozy trip‑hop (“Need Me”), and issued a morbidly sensual Valentine’s Day communiqué (“Man”). Her singles arrive like tarot cards pulled at random—each one a portent, never a prediction—and together they sketch an artist whose only constant is forward momentum. Some might call her polymath pop, while others will recognise in her work that familiar mix of hedonism, high‑art aspiration, and outright provocation. Either way, she’s a necessary antagonist in pop’s increasingly polite conversation.
Born in L.A. and raised for a time in suburban Orange County, Gianna moved seamlessly between choir rehearsals and artistic endeavors.. By her own reckoning, this ultimately sowed the seeds to her becoming “a trained opera singer, dancer, rapper, filmmaker, writer—an all‑around artist”—who also teaches pre‑school by day, because the candour of toddlers reminds her what unfiltered creativity looks like. The classical warm-ups, the street-dance drills, and the countless performances she’s given since the age of 16 at various punk venues and warehouses—all these influences have woven themselves into the vibrant pop collage she crafts today.
At seventeen, she founded BLOK with brothers Damian Blaise and Jesse Saint John, a sibling unit that treated rap verses like arson and synths like blunt instruments. Within two years, BLOK had hoovered up five consecutive Orange County Music Awards and found themselves swapping backstage stories with Gwen Stefani and Snoop Dogg. When Peaches scouted Gianna out of a BLOK video and hauled her on tour, the band’s ascent stalled—but the detour unlocked a darker, stranger solo voice that BLOK’s electro‑rap shell couldn’t contain.
That voice is best encountered on stage, where Gianna treats her body as much as her mic like a percussive element. She refuses pre‑show rituals (no click‑tracks, no mirror pep‑talks), preferring to “be as organic and in the moment as possible.” Videos circulate of her leaping five feet into an accidental split, eyes rolled white, only to pop back up with the grin of someone who’s surprised even herself. It’s performance as self‑exorcism, the inverse of pop’s choreographed certainty; one observer marvelled that she seems “possessed by art.”
The pandemic year didn’t dampen that feral energy—it distilled it. February 2020’s “Unlocked” arrived on Manimal Vinyl as what American Pancake dubbed “electro anti‑pop pop destruction,” praising how its askew production “pushed idols off pedestals.” Gianna’s own explanation is fiercer: the track imagines femme deities worshipped, discarded, then reborn as agents of revenge. Follow‑ups “Beg,” “Enrapture,” and the insomnia‑anthem “Suffer” stretched the template outward—one eye toward the club, the other gouging at patriarchy’s soft underbelly. Apple Music now lists the 2020 run alongside the earlier outlier “Crown,” forming a body of work loud enough to drown the year’s creeping dread.
If “Unlocked” was a gauntlet slam, 2022’s “Man” was a confession whispered through cracked lipstick. Released on Valentine’s Day, the single, Gianna told Weirdo Music Forever, is about “my unwavering mortality consciousness…a morbid sexy V‑Day release.” Over glacial synth‑stabs, she sings not of romance but of entropy, seeking intimacy in the knowledge that every heartbeat is a slow clock toward oblivion. It’s pop as memento mori—Billie Holiday by way of Coil—and it confirms that Gianna’s flirtations are never merely carnal; they’re philosophical.
2023 completed an unofficial triptych: “Desolation,” “Collapse,” and “Need Me.” Each single arrives bone‑clean yet blood‑warm, foregrounding her operatic alto against beats that slither between trap tempo and no‑wave abrasion. On “Need Me” she sings like a dominatrix nursing a melancholy streak; on “Collapse” she loops a multi‑tracked choir that evokes Diamanda Galás if she’d grown up bingeing MTV’s Amp. These singles aren’t collected on an album—Gianna prefers the piecemeal model, a drip‑feed that denies the critic’s urge to box her into an “era.”
The guest list around Gianna reads like a Venn diagram of cult heroes. Peaches drafted her as a dancer before inviting her to open solo sets; the late Genesis P-Orridge offered spiritual kinship; Deerhoof shared bills where time signatures bent like Salvador Dalí clocks; Charli XCX tapped brother Jesse Saint John for hooks that trickled back into Gianna’s universe. Debbie Harry cameoed Gianna in a video, Margaret Cho staged a make-out scene, and David LaChapelle suspended her in a surreal Coca-Cola ad. Gianna’s network proves the old avant-garde adage: stay weird long enough and the mainstream will come knocking.
What unites the disparate threads—opera warm-ups, rap cadences, no-wave feedback, pre-school pedagogy—is a refusal to obey genre, gender, or even gravity. Paper dubbed her “already your favourite artist’s favourite artist,” while American Pancake calls her a “living, breathing work of avant‑garde art.” On stage, she reclaims outbursts as a feminist tool; on record, she sculpts pop hooks from the debris. She’s proof that when the industry builds a box, there’s always at least one artist limber enough to somersault out of it, land in the splits, and keep singing.
Beyond performing, Gianna curates Gianna Gianna Presents…, a monthly radio rendezvous on KCHUNG Radio 1630AM. Beaming from LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the show dives into insightful chats and carefully curated musical selections, streaming globally via KCHUNGRADIO.org on the MOCA channel, archived for future indulgence. Upcoming episodes are slated for July 30th (3-5 pm), August 29th (3-5 pm), and thereafter every fourth Saturday from 2-4 pm.
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Gianna Gianna will also be performing live on July 31 at 8 pm at The Three Clubs in Hollywood.
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