Qveen Herby

One Liner:  Very generic pop rap with a clever bar here and there

Wikipedia Genre: hip hop, R&B, soul, pop-rap, trap

Home: London

Poster Position: 9
Both Weekends.
Sunday at 7:45.

IHG Stage.

Thoughts:   Another weirdo spelling thing.  First impression during the first song is like some Fergalicious lite rap thing, or maybe that Iggy Azalea gal.  I absolutely find it really weird that she is this late in the day and I have literally never heard this name uttered in my lifetime.  She is heavy on the song names being cutesy - "Obitchuary," "THANK GODDESS," etc.

I love it.  Her actual name is Amy Renee Heidemann Noonan.  An Amy born in the 80's is amazing - I thought that name was reserved exclusively for 70's babies like Melissa, Shelley, and Angela.  I guess they were slow on the passe name uptake in Seward, Nebraska.  She was originally part of a duo called Karmin, with her new-husband Nick Noonan, which was decidedly more straight-pop.  Their biggest track, "Brokenhearted" rips off a Katy Perry-sounding track and has Amy Renee's voice powerfully belting over the top with a little rapping in there.  Wikipedia says that this album was released to poor reviews from critics, but was a commercial success anyway.

She apparently picked the name "by combining 'Qveen' a nickname given to her in college alongside 'Herby' the mascot of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, later realizing that 'Herby' means 'Warrior'."  I just barfed in my mouth a tiny bit.  Also, had no clue that the Cornhusker's mascot is named Herby.  That is brutal.  The only Herbie I recognize is the car.  She also has a makeup line called Qveen Studios.

Her release schedule started out with a progression of EPs, all very unoriginally named as EP1, EP2, etc. up through EP9, before she finally released a 2021 album called A Woman.  On those early EPs, she had four bigger tracks - "Sade in the 90s" on 2018's EP3 (24.9 million streams), "Mint" on 2019's EP6 (17 million), "Vitamins" on EP7 (25.2 million), and finally "Sugar Daddy," her biggest song, with 78 million streams, from #8.

Hear the Fergie action there?  I'm sure this was big on TikTok with people using the lyrics to show off Gucci and Prada or whatever.  Her tongue is a weird color when she licks that lollipop.  Not a good song.  "MAGIC" has some Eminem to it, with weird little voices and her cadence in there.  "G SPOT" sounds kinda like Tierra Whack.

Since that 2021 album, she has kept up the pace, throwing out albums like candy.  2021's Halloqveen, 2022's MAD QVEEN, 2023's THE MUSE, 2023's HOUSEWIFE, and 2024's THE ALCHEMIST.  None of those have done huge streaming numbers, so let's check the top track from the newest album.  "LAVISH" has 598k streams.

Meh.  The underlying tune is super generic-sounding, like she found a beat that was already loaded on her keyboard.  The lyrics are likewise super generic - feels like she just tried to think of the current trend words and phrases she could string together to try to get TikTok to notice.  After listening for a morning, I think that is my main beef here - some of the songs sound kind of fun, but if you really listen to them there is nothing there at all.