Work samples

  • Digital Collage Afro Future Slideshow

    A collection of my digital collages, a mix of hand drawn illustrations and photography. An afro-future perspective.  I am very proud of what I am calling "Chapter 1" of my visual arts journey. These digital collages feature my hand illustrations and (most often) my own photography. #digitalcollages

    Games with Friends
    3 Men in the Fire
    A Tale of 2 Astronauts
    Globe of Acres
    The Dj at the Piano
    I'm Glad Your'e Here
    Absolute Truth
    Joseph in Space
    The DJ at the Piano
    The Calm After
    34th and Greenmount

     

    Available for Purchase
  • QueenEarth - Subject Matter Expert (Lyric Video)

    I have worked so many jobs. When I took my artful passions and turned them into a polished resume, I found myself amongst some slightly younger millennials at start ups. I’m cool enough to be a good “cultural” fit, but too Black and way too Queer to be sitting with the cool kids at lunch. For me, that meant a glass ceiling in many places, but never one when I am in the front of the room, at the mic, on the sticks, at the wheel, behind the curtain. I will continue towards my passions forever. I hope to find us wherever I go. I often do not. When I was making this video, I wanted to find stock photos and images with Black people, women, and Queer folks doing the same things that I do, that I have done, that we do everyday. But too often, we are not in the room, we are not assumed capable, or there is no pipeline, or the powers that be look for candidates in places where we aren’t found. And marketing doesn’t often show us. Or they do.

  • Dear Love - QueenEarth (Original Lyric Video)
    I am fortunate to be quarantined with an amazing wife and partner, who just happens to be a nurse. When she isn't nursing, we make art together and I couldn't be more thankful. "Dear Love" is dedicated to her and the people who keep this world spinning around. In mid March 2020, I hopped in a Lyft to get to the airport to start a Midwest tour that would be the culmination of 10 years in the making. I was going to travel to a new part of the country and meet people who needed to speak, and wanted to be a part of Queer Core: Behind the Music. Right before I checked my bag, my phone rang. All of it was cancelled. Music has always been soothing to me. It faithfully gives me something to occupy my time and my thoughts . . . other than with thoughts of coronavirus, quarantines, hoarding, and all of the other bad things that are impacting the way we move about the world. We can't go to the gym.
  • Queer Core (Lyric Video) - QueenEarth
    400 years of captivity 75 years of Jim Crow and legal lynching The knowledge that I/we/us could always be arrested for breathing in the wrong direction or looking or walking or working or having the audacity to be ourselves in our own skin . . . A Great Migration and a Stonewall later, I emerged to tell my Queer Black story. I hope you enjoy! #bars

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About Melissa (QueenEarth)

Baltimore City  

QueenEarth is a storyteller, singer/songwriter, and visual artist. Her coursework and portfolio includes writing and composition, curriculum and instruction, and arts integration. She also shares her gifts as a performer, educator, speaker,  visual artist, and event producer. She has released several albums of original lyrical and instrumental music, solo and with bandmates and… more

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Songs for Isolation: Jazz/ Hip Hop Instrumentals

Though we are under quarantine, no one said we would have to stop making music, or that I couldn't do it safely. I had to create and in the process, I learned more instruments and how to make music in my home studio.

Here is an evergrowing list of jazz/ hip hop/ lofi instrumentals with myself and the many voices that come from my head and hands and the universe, and the folks who came to safely play music. I hope to add more people to these collaborations. 
  • How Many Times (feat Tiffany Defoe) ‑ QueenEarth
    Earlier in the year, when it was safe(er) to share space and collaborate, I had a visitor to my home studio. We/I met in the music scene and through community building at a local events space. Tiffany Defoe is a beast and a helluva talent on saxophone and I was honored to learn from her this past year. Making beats is fun, but learning to lead and coach another human musically, over my own composition, is a new skillset. Playing bass and guitar and keys was also new. But why stop there? If I learned anything in 2020, it was to fear less and do more, try more, attempt more. I have always wanted to record at home and I did a lot of that this year. It was great to bring in a few guests. I am thankful for @bandcamp for giving artists a greater share for our hard work. Check out this instrumental, a little hip hop, a little smooth jazz, and a lot of saxophone. Props to this wonderful city for cultivating these connections and meaningful creating. More to come.
  • Quarantined Sax - QueenEarth
    “Quarantined Sax” by QueenEarth* One of the cures for coronavirus anxiety? We don’t have a medical degree, but we think it’s safe to say: Jazz. And thanks to acoustic singer-songwriter QueenEarth, we now have a whole album of instrumental, jazz-influenced tracks from her new Queer Core: Songs for Isolation. We found this fifth track particularly soothing, fueled by serpentine saxophone and sprightly keys, allowing us to finally unwind in its instrumental interplay. Be sure to check out “Piano Lesson” while you’re at it, too. - Batimore Magazine, The Big Baltimore Playlist, April 2020
  • Ancestral Drama ‑ QueenEarth
    I read somewhere that trauma lasts for 7 generations. The time can be less if we are powerful enough to break curses, undo those neurons, rewire our brain and its connections. #ancestral I have learned to look for the routes that connect us. Roads. Stages. Arts. Culture and experiences. Neurons. Rivers. Lava. Conception and the universe. It is all the same matter to me. It all matters to me. Being inside the house forced many of us to deal with our thoughts. An our environment. I reflect on losing loved ones, people I love losing loved ones, and losing themselves in the stress of quarantine. Where the rules change often, and the fear rises and falls like the tides, I keep making music. It is my constant. I create goals for each new year, but last year unfolded and made me pivot in directions unknown. I was tired of talking, so I made instrumentals and created training for people to dig into their own thoughts and experiences with American racism.
  • Move 2.1 (feat 4TAE) ‑ QueenEarth
    The original "Move" was a rap song. 4TAE helped me grow in my instrumental/producer skillset. He brought his trombone and his bass to my home studio. This was the FIRST collaboration to appear on one of my instrumental collections. "Move" was composed in an apartment in a less than desirable, to redlining and personal standards, neighborhood. It was a season of growth, which one might like to avoid, but life has a way of nudging us forward. I miss that apartment, but I hated going outside. I think this was a helluva collaboration. Thank you 4TAE. (https://www.facebook.com/4taemusic/)
  • Nachos for Breakfast 2.0 - QueenEarth (feat. Tiffany Defoe)
    My favorite meal is breakfast. Period. I like cheese grits, fluffy scrambled cheese eggs, and crispy bacon. Salmon patties. Farmers market sage sausage. A full English. Youth hostel continental breakfast. Diner food. Spam and eggs. Poached eggs on anything. Omelettes. During the pandemic, I had plenty of breakfast, but I missed my weekends at the beach and sand in my toe's. I longed for Ocean City and Seacrets, waking up late, and looking for a hole in the wall Mexican spot with the a fat burrito and a basket of nachos while I wait for my comida. I missed traveling and eating local fare. I thought of food and vacation when I made this music. I have been more than satisfied with my breakfast burritos from Taco Loco in the Waverly market, and it is worth the walk on Saturday mornings through my favorite part of this city. Anyway, here is a song that I tinkered with while I was missing the beach. I laid the guitar and drums and sat on it for a while hoping I'd get to the Ocean.
  • Not Enough ‑ QueenEarth
    Indigenous percussion. Jazz horns. Hip hop kicks. It was a thread in my sounds for the music this year. I had fun making this timeless video. #space
  • York Road ‑ QueenEarth
    I love this city and everyday, I am amazed with the city of Baltimore. It has made me into the artist and awesome human that I am, only because iron sharpens iron. I was able to grow here and become part of a beautiful village where we make art, tell stories, make music, and tell the world who we are. Thank you to this village for raising me up. I came from Pittsburgh, and bleed black and gold, but this is my 3rd home. Here a composition that fell out of my head last summer. I composed it in my East Baltimore home studio. Let's go for a lor ride in my Jeep. Up Greenmount and down York Road. The gentrification is coming! This construction starts at 7am. They been going for 6 months+ Change is constant. I wonder what it will look like in 5 years. Who will be here? Where will they go? Where did they come from? What will be the stories from this time, in this part of the world? These are my roadtrip thoughts. On my way home from the Waverly Saturday market. Enjoy.
  • Guys Night In ‑ QueenEarth
    I miss my friends. I miss hugs and toasting beverages. I took a little trip down memory lane for these visuals. Remember hanging out friends and loved ones? I named this one because the night I composed it, my wife went out with friends. It was the last of intergroup socializing, before the s**t hit the fan and lockdown got serious. I like to scream, "Guys Night Out!" randomly, because that's what I do. When she came home, I shared this beat. One day, maybe soon, I'll play it at a house party. This instrumental appears on "Cactus Jack" by Black Chakra.
  • Run Rock Bells ‑ QueenEarth
    I was born in a world, and at a time, where Hip Hop was already a strong hold. It would be a few years before I watched RUN DMC and Aerosmith on MTV, but beats like this shaped my childhood. Djing MCing Breaking Graffiti Beatboxing The Elements.
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    • Queer Core: Behind the Music

    When I couldn't fool myself into silence and make more instrumentals, I wrote these songs.  These are tales of a Queer, Black, Woman, often pushed out, but never straying from my call to be myself and to continue to be a connector. These are stories from quarantine and from my hard, learned experiences the past 5 years. Some are long overdue lessons and the rest built my confidence as a creator, rapper, and musician. 

    In 2020, I became a producer.  Enjoy Queer Core: Behind the Music. Only on Bandcamp. For now. 

    Written by QueenEarth
    Guitar, Bass, Keys, Rap, and Vocals by QueenEarth
    Produced by QueenEarth
    Recorded and mixed by QueenEarth
    Mastered by QueenEarth and Blackwater House, Baltimore, MD
    • Subject Matter Expert (intro) - QueenEarth
      I have worked so many jobs. When I took my artful passions and turned them into a polished resume, I found myself amongst some slightly younger millennials at start ups. I’m cool enough to be a good “cultural” fit, but too Black and way too Queer to be sitting with the cool kids at lunch. For me, that meant a glass ceiling in many places, but never one when I am in the front of the room, at the mic, on the sticks, at the wheel, behind the curtain. I will continue towards my passions forever. I hope to find us wherever I go. I often do not. When I was making this video, I wanted to find stock photos and images with Black people, women, and Queer folks doing the same things that I do, that I have done, that we do everyday. But too often, we are not in the room, we are not assumed capable, or there is no pipeline, or the powers that be look for candidates in places where we aren’t found. And marketing doesn’t often show us. Or they do.
    • Dear Love - QueenEarth
      If we are fortunate to spend time with the ones we love, 2020 has been a year when I learned to cherish it the most. #howdyouliketospendtoday Lyric Video! www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhOsYcBMWps&feature=youtu.be www.queenearth.com/2020/05/dearlovelyricvideo/
    • Collared (Covid Acapella Remix) - QueenEarth
      This song is one of my stories when I do Queer Core: Behind the Music. I come from Southern roots, gospel music, soul food, and cast iron pancakes. I have learned to say enslaved instead of slave, as language is powerful. A slave has no past and no potential. An enslaved person is human and placed in captivity. How shall I refer to my roots? We are called to walk in faith, to till the Earth, and to hold onto the legacy from before captivity. I hope you enjoy this ode to the musical roots, especially the ones that came from my mother. Unchained. Free. Faith filled. Blessed. Check out this bathroom/ closet flow remix. To my mother, and in honor of all the folks who cannot gather to celebrate their loved ones passing into ancestry during Coronavirus 2020. lyrics Written for a podcast, but not chosen. With not regrets and nothing but a gift of an opportunity, I look forward to the harvest for all of us. #collared This song is one of my stories when I do Queer Core.
    • Queer Core - QueenEarth
      In my not saying much of anything during covid and 2020 racial tensions that came to a boil over . . . I decided to write this song and help me get some of my thoughts out of my head, even if I couldn't get out of the house. 400 years of captivity 75 years of Jim Crow and legal lynching The knowledge that I/we/us could always be arrested for breathing in the wrong direction or looking or walking or working or having the audacity to be ourselves in our own skin . . . A Great Migration and a Stonewall later, I emerged to tell my Queer Black story. I hope you enjoy! #bars Lyric video! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65Zq7Hny7w
    • Move 1.0 - QueenEarth
      This song was written in 2018. We had just moved into a new apartment, in a nice neighborhood, in the Winter. And then the sun came out. "Move" is about growth. Rough rough mix. Hear the pupper in the background. #issaeasteregg Remix coming soon!
    • Mindset - QueenEarth (feat. Black Chakra)
      I was able to have folks over to play instruments, but Black Chakra was the first to come over with social distancing and emcee-ing. He helped me learn the producer/engineer role. I thank him for letting me wear this hat. I used it to fan these flames.
    • Anna Mae - QueenEarth
      A Love story. Hip Hop and R&B style.
    • Blue Eyes Brown Eyes - QueenEarth
      This was the first song I recorded after Mom passed. She would have been one to talk to me and help me make sense of this world. I have had some life changing conversations with my white friends, and I go to bed at night, when I sleep well, with some hope for the future. I hope we can get this right!
    • Ancestral Drama 1.0 - QueenEarth
      For the 2020 production Dreamweaver This instrumental was built for the needed shift to online storytelling in a global pandemic. This is the ONLY instrumental on Queer Core: Behind the Music <3 lyrics. This is the ONLY instrumental on Queer Core: Behind the Music I started the year with sounds and speechlessness. I ended with an album full of honest lyrics. I am thankful for this opportunity to share my gifts with the Baltimore theatre community, and for the ache to push through, even when my mouth could no longer suffice. I love making beats and scores.
    • Naked Truths - QueenEarth
      This should have been on an older project, but I had to make the beat to do it like this. I channeled Usher a little bit. I have BIG dreams for this music video. Enjoy a song about lies and cheating. It needed to be 2020 for me to get the harmonies to do this like I would have done it around the firepit with my homies. Talking s**t! It takes a village to do R&B harmonies!
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