Most rappers don’t write songs about their eczema. And if they did, they most likely wouldn’t admit to having it “so bad I’m bleeding.” And if they wrote about the loss of a mother and growing up in foster care with an abusive parent, it’s very unlikely they’d do it with the sincerity Destiny Frasqueri brings to her songs. When the 26-year-old mixed-race native New Yorker began her musical career as Wavy Spice, she barely even rhymed — her first song consisted mainly of her saying “Bitch, I’m posh” again and again. But she endeared herself to groups all over the city — women, queer kids, drag queens, ravers, punks — who saw themselves reflected in her music, and over time, she developed rhyming skills that she channeled into energetic, moving anthems. She changed her name to Princess Nokia and released a series of albums, including one of earnest emo anthems, that secured her reputation as a tireless cheerleader for outcasts. Snuggled up in a fluffy red zip-up fleece in a small meeting room in her Bronx apartment building, Frasqueri described what it took to become Princess Nokia.

Video by Sasha Arutyunova

What’s the first music you saw in New York? When I was maybe 6 I’d go to the Manhattan School of Music to see my brother and sister play cello and piano and violin. Before that, I watched my brother play at Carnegie Hall with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman. It made a big impression on me.

What was your first experience going to clubs in the city? When I was a little girl, I used to read The Village Voice a lot, and I became obsessed with New York night-life culture. I was really attracted to the flamboyant aspects of gay life, so going downtown, I’d see all the club kids that I read about. The first gay club I ever went to, I was 12. It was a club called Crash in Queens, and my foster mother had family that worked there, and we got to go there before somebody’s birthday party. I took it upon myself to really explore the club and look at everything. In the bathroom, there were all these Polaroids of all of the drag queens and clubgoers. It was phallic statues, very Gaultier, very Versace. At that moment I knew that was where I’d be at for the rest of my life.

The New York Issue What It Takes To Light Up the Stage

Before a performance at Vassar College.

How did you go from rave culture to hip-hop? I had a boyfriend in 2010, and he was a rapper. I told him, “I’m a rapper, too.” I had this really spiritual inclination that this was what I was going to be doing, even though I didn’t do it well. I’m not a hip-hop head. I didn’t grow up obsessed with rap. Hip-hop lives in my soul in a very singular, isolated, personal way.

Do you remember your first show? Yeah — it was awesome. I was paid $300 to perform two songs. Me and my friends walked the Williamsburg Bridge, we got there, I performed and then afterward I hung out outside with the original Puerto Rican men of Williamsburg. They turned the fire hydrant on for me, and I remember being in this stupor of euphoria and screaming aloud and just jumping all over the place and going, “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life!”

At Vassar College.

Your songs can be supernarrative, but the audience always seems to know all the words anyway. That happened immediately when I released the mixtape “1992.” I released it Sept. 6, 2016, and then we planned a release party and a show, and within a span of 10 hours everybody knew the words. I sold out my first thousand-seat show at Knockdown Center. So collectively everything happened really fast, but not in a hyperindustry way. Two weeks later I went to Europe, and the whole tour was sold out, and everybody knew every single word. It was the most wonderful thing in the whole world. What I would assume ketamine feels like. It was Matthew McConaughey on a beach in a hammock on a quaalude. I felt proud that I did it in such a D.I.Y. way, because women having that type of power, it’s unheard-of.

You’re a very physical performer. How much do you think about your movement onstage? My movement comes from hardcore culture. It comes from punk culture. It comes from rave culture. How does a young girl, 5-foot-3, exert her body with movement in such an aggressive, assertive way? It’s that spitting into the air. It’s punching the air. It’s kicking. It’s not stopping. It’s banging your head. It isn’t feminine. Ain’t no heels, ain’t no choreography. The whole basis of “1992” was the exclamation that I didn’t need to be perfect or conventionally pretty. Going onstage with no hair and makeup is a big testament to who you are and how comfortable you feel with yourself. I’m pretty gross, and that’s great.

With a fan.

Now that you’ve been performing for a few years, what’s your relationship with the audience like? Princess Nokia is about mistakes and celebration of community and acceptance of alternative people. So the shows are a place of safety. They’re a mecca, a sanctuary for all those people like me. At a rap show, it’s about men and their bravado: Women are in the back, men are moshing in the front. I wanted to really change that, so I did, and I started creating spaces where women could come to the front and feel safe during hip-hop shows, where women didn’t feel as if they had to aspire to be like me, that they were O.K. to feel like themselves.