Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.12.2019, Qupperneq 12

12 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 21— 2019
In the Icelandic rap scene, there’s Coun-
tess Malaise and there’s everyone else.
Since the the dark monarch debuted
three years ago with her hit “Goth
Bitch,” the Countess has been an elusive
figure in the community. Rarely drop-
ping tracks or playing live, the rapper,
real name D!rfinna Benita Basalan,
has projected an aura of mystery. With
the sporadic release of songs that were
aggressive, honest, dark, but still turnt
as hell, fans have spent the last few
years waiting with bated breath for her
first release.
This Halloween, she finally dropped
her debut effort ‘HYSTERÍA,’ and it
quickly took every “goth bitch” in the
city by storm. With itsrabid release
of sex, anger, trauma, and more, it is
unlike anything the city has seen. She
followed it up with a packed release
show at Priki#, where the chanteuse,
clad in black vinyl pants, stood on a box
and screamed her truth at a fanatical
crowd. Now, just one month later, the
artist has been nominated for a Krau-
mur award.
The lucky ones
I meet D!rfinna in the Kling & Bang
gallery at the Marshall House, where
she’s hard at work on the joint exhibi-
tion ‘Lucky Me?’, which she’s doing in
collaboration with fashion designer
Darren Mark and visual artist Mela-
nie Ubaldo. The three are all Icelan-
dic artists of Filipino descent, and the
exhibit itself dives into the unusual
psyche created by straddling those two
worlds. They call themselves the Lucky
3 collective.
‘Lucky Me?’ will open in a week and
the room is currently in a state of pre-
installation chaos. Navigating the
gallery, D!finna points at the scattered
piles of material and explains exactly
what everything will be. In one corner
the trio will build a makeshift basket-
ball court. In another, they’ll erect a
south asian-style bodega. A separate
room will house a karaoke parlour—
an iconic pastime for those of Filipino
origin.
Gangs & rice
“When you grow up mixed, you don’t
really feel like you have the right to
belong anywhere,” D!rfinna says
calmly, sitting in the back of the gallery.
“I grew up in Brei#holt, where there
were a lot of immigrants, but I moved
around a lot because my father and
mother split and my Mom was sick,
so we often lived in social housing.”
While immigrants make up 15.6%
of the Icelandic population nowa-
days, that number was significantly
smaller during D!finna’s childhood.
“There were some mixed race kids
but there was still a lot of racism. In
Brei#holt, there used to be a lot of
beef between brown people and white
people; gangs, you know,” she explains.
“One day there was this big knife fight
in a kiosk where a lot of Filipinos and
other races were fighting against
Icelanders. The next day in school,
these older kids—white kids—were
like ‘Yeah, we’re gonna beat you up.’”
She was defended by another
mixed-race classmate, but the incident
was just one of many where D!rfinna
was targeted for being different. “They
used to call me names, like monkey,
sumo, or rice. They even called me the
n-word,” she says, before stopping to
pull up her sleeve, revealing a scribble
of a tattoo I can’t quite make out. “I got
‘Rice’ tattooed on me, but it’s upside
down, so I can see it and no one else.”
Tough girls
She laughs, maybe in discomfort,
maybe in pride, but it’s clear that
this dissonance created the Countess
who now sits in front of me. Talk to
D!rfinna for five minutes and you’ll see
what growing up straddling two worlds
created in her. She’s tough. Known
around town for speaking up about
injustice and mental health, she takes
up space and is unapologetic about it.
At the same time, though, she’s vulner-
able, emotional, and honest. She wears

Feature :
The
Outsider
COUNTESS MALAISE, the outsider of
Icelandic hip-hop, now claims her throne
Words:
Hannah Jane Cohen
Photos:
Rut Sigur#ardóttir