Noname brings the 10th Anniversary of Telefone to Emo’s Austin on Saturday, August 15. A decade is a long time in rap — but the debut mixtape she released out of Chicago in July 2016 still sounds like it was made under pressure that hasn’t lifted. This tour is a reckoning, not a victory lap.
About Noname
Fatimah Nyeema Warner came up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, started in slam poetry, and placed third in the city’s Louder Than a Bomb competition before she started rapping. The transition made sense — her delivery has always sounded written first, spoken second, a rhythm that comes from the page before it gets to the track. On Telefone, that instinct landed as something critics struggled to name precisely. Rolling Stone called it some of 2016’s most thought-provoking hip-hop; Stereogum described “a potency and urgency in her complicated, spoken word-esque cadences and subdued delivery.” Rolling Stone has since put her among the best rappers alive, full stop. The comparisons — Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Nina Simone — are accurate in spirit even if the sound was entirely her own.
Room 25 came in 2018, self-funded from touring money and guest features, including the breakthrough appearance on Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap in 2013 that first put her name in national circulation. Pitchfork gave it Best New Music and later included it on their list of the 200 best albums of the 2010s. Sundial, released in 2023, featured Jay Electronica, Common, and Billy Woods and drew a Metacritic score of 87 — harder than the earlier work, still precise. She also runs the Noname Book Club, a project she started in 2019 focused on radical texts by authors of color, which has become as central to her public identity as the albums.
Live, she performs with a full band and backup singers. Fans who’ve seen prior Austin dates describe shows where she stops between songs to address the crowd directly — dry, funny, present. Austin is one of her most-played cities.
About the Venue
Emo’s Austin is at 2015 E Riverside Drive, about two miles from downtown Austin. The original Emo’s opened in 1992 at the corner of Red River and East Sixth Street — a punk club that built its reputation across three decades before relocating to East Riverside in 2011. Live Nation operates it now, with programming that spans hip-hop, electronic, and rock. Capacity is 1,700.
Tickets
Presale opens June 11, 2026 at 10:00 AM CDT. Doors at 6:00 PM (a pre-doors patio access add-on is available); show starts at 7:00 PM. Get tickets here.