t’s Wednesday night at the Box, the notorious erotic club in downtown New York, and Tokischa is stripping off her lingerie onstage. She cheekily steps behind a white, backlit curtain so that the crowd can only see the shadow of her body as she dances sensually. The room of devoted fans roar at each gyration.
A few moments later, Tokischa sports a skirt and cropped T-shirt as she lies face down and claws at the stage in painful desperation, channeling the heartbreak that overflows on her new album, Amor & Droga. She’s delivering this dramatic performance for an album listening event, and each theatrical move speaks to the duality at the heart of Latin music’s favorite provocateur.
“You guys think I’m just a horny bitch? I have a lot of feelings. I’ve gone through a lot,” the Dominican musician tells Rolling Stone. It’s the day after her listening event at the Box, and Tokischa is a quieter, more mild-mannered version of herself. It almost feels like she is a different person with her bare face and casual low-rise jeans, though the graphic T-shirt she wears does feature a naked woman with a bushy crotch and the slogan “Happiness is a tight pussy.”
“The world got to know this cute bellaca [wicked] girl that was just horny, writing songs in her room,” Tokischa says, referencing the past five years she’s spent in the spotlight, courting controversy and shaking up the music industry with her sexually explicit lyrics and provocative demeanor. Now, with her long-awaited debut album, the 30-year-old is showing a more emotionally-charged side of herself and her art. “I wanted to take the inspiration from what I lived at the time and bring it into this new space and show the world what really happened,” she says.
Tokischa first started releasing music in January 2021. By that summer, she’d gotten co-signs from major stars like J Balvin and Rosalia, jumping on tracks for each. The next year, her riotous, sexually liberated energy caught the attention of Madonna, and the pair collaborated on a remix of “Hung Up.” Since then, the fans that fell in love with Tokischa’s IDGAF attitude have been clamoring for her debut LP. So what took her so long to get her own full-length project out into the world? Partly, Tokischa blames management woes.
“The lack of experience in a project can mess up a lot of things,” she says. “The budget for this album was crazy because I was not experienced.” She claims that she spent nearly a million dollars of Warner Music Group’s money to make the project.
This past January, Tokischa sorted the business side of the album’s release and focused on how to bring it out into the world. Over 17 tracks, Amor & Droga chronicles her toxic relationship from a decade ago, when she struggled with substance abuse issues in the Dominican Republic, and how each moment led to her new, healthier reality. (She’s been sober since 2020.) Tokischa pulls no punches, showcasing her sexual desires alongside her family trauma and every dark thought in between. Below, Tokischa breaks down key tracks off the album, and just like on the album, she doesn’t spare any of the raw details.
“Mi Novio”
I was 20, 21 when I had the idea for this song. I first came to Miami and I met Diplo. I’m a big fan of drum and bass and I was like, “I want to make a drum-and-bass song for my album.” I had an idea of how I wanted to tell this story, to start from the beginning of when I met this guy [in the Dominican Republic]. Diplo put out that beat and I just started writing. I wanted to make sure everybody knew that’s when my life changed. That’s when I tried ecstasy for the first time. I started seeing the world differently.
I remember we were at the Malecón in front of the open sea. I was feeling high and the sea called to me: “Jump in, you’re a part of this. Come now, in the middle of the night.” That’s the beginning of the story. I loved the high. I loved having fun. I loved tripping, but I didn’t want to do it every day. [My boyfriend and I] had a lot of problems at that time and we used to physically fight.
“Vacía”
This song went through a lot of different sounds with the instrumentals because the vocals were so strong. Those are some of the best vocals I’ve ever done. I wrote it in such a different environment, too. It was a few years ago, in 2022. I was away in Jarabacoba on a mountain with my friends and my vocal coach and she was playing guitar. I think that’s the first time I ever wrote a song on a guitar. But then I was like, “I want this beat to be kind of alternative. I don’t want it to be a ballad.” We reworked it for the album and I added a little bit of reggaeton and it hit really nice and smooth. It took me a long time to finish it, but it was worth it.
ADVERTISEMENT“Banda”
This song is so old, I still have the demo. When I wrote that song, I was with the guy [that “Mi Novio”] is about. The relationship lasted like three, four years maybe. It was really hard [to write], because I was heartbroken because of him. He had this thing where he never left the house; I had to beg him to come over to my house 20 minutes away. When I recorded that song, I was screaming. But it was so hard to recreate that emotion because I’m so happy in my life now. I have a beautiful boyfriend that loves me and cares for me. It took me a few sessions to get into that emotion, specifically, and feel it.
“Perreo Llorando”
I love this album because a lot of the songs are so old. People might think, “Oh, now she wants to do this type of music after she got lit.” No, these songs are old. This was my first time doing a reggaeton song with an actual Puerto Rican producer [Súbelo Neo]. We worked on the beat and I was like, “I like raw dembow. I like raw reggaeton. I want to feel that drum hit. I want to feel the bass.”
I made this when I first came to Miami in 2021 and I saw how everything was sad. I had stopped doing drugs in 2020, so I was still super sensitive to everything. I saw all of these people outside in Miami, rich people with all the money in the world, all the Gucci, and everything is still sad. So I wrote the song and I recorded it and it was instant. I knew it was an amazing song. But my management back in the day was like, “We can’t put that out now… We have to keep doing dembow.” That’s bullshit. As an artist, we should be allowed to just go whatever direction we feel like. This song was kept from the world all that time.
“Diva y Depresiva”
This one comes right after me begging this guy to call me [on the track “7pm”]. So I’m like, “Wait, I’m that bitch. I’m the diva.” I’ve learned that. I was so obsessed with my first boyfriend. When I moved, my idea was to try to see him again and propose to him. I brought a ring to propose to this man. I was so delusional. The day that he was going to return to D.R. and we were going to meet up, he never showed up. I was so sad. That day, I did molly. And when I was high, it just hit me. I felt so stupid. I was like, “What is wrong with me? I’m so creative and amazing and I’m crying over this guy that I was with a few years ago.” I got back to myself. I walked down the park with my blunt and my beer and I was like, “I’m that bitch. Watch out everybody.”
“Lola”
She’s one of the only friends that I have from back in the day, like 10, 11 years ago when I was living what I’m talking about on the album. In the song, I’m talking about our relationship, her mood swings, her relationship with her sister and just how we used to be. We used to drink rum and listen to this song “Tear You Apart” that she showed me from the band She Wants Revenge. We used to listen to that song on the train all the time. The inspiration for the sound [of “Lola”] came from that song. We just reunited last night. She came [to the Box] and I showed her the song. She was like, “You’re making me blush!” When I make a song about somebody or show somebody a song, I like to do it in person.
“Mona”
On that song, I’m rapping hard. When I was working on the album in 2025, I was like, “Maybe I could invite [Spanish rapper] Kase.O because I already know him.” He matched the energy perfectly. I’m so proud of that one. That collaboration, it’s like part of my core. KaseO is a rapper that I appreciate and I love. I used to listen to him a lot when I was a teenager. Everything that he raps, it’s so personal, and he’s a Pisces, too. I just felt connected to his music. I know that people that are fans of hip-hop en español, they’re going to love it because he’s an icon.
“Su Frida”
You know what’s so funny about “Su Frida”? I held back a lot of things that I was saying there because I didn’t want to hurt people. It was too raw. When I wrote that song, I was mad at everybody around me. I had a lot of family trauma. I grew up around a crackhead. I grew up around a thief. I grew up seeing and saying a lot of crazy things and then it took me years to unlearn that behavior. I’ve suffered a lot and I wanted that song to be the second to last because I wanted to give context.
In the D.R., the word sufrido [sufferer] was popularized by [rapper] Trentisiete. Whenever somebody in their art is sad, it’s like, “Estoy sufrido hoy, me siento como un sufrido, yo estoy solo.” [Trientisiete] was going to be on the track, but then he told me, “I’m not suffering enough to be here. I need to go and suffer some more because of what you’re saying here.” The official Dominican sufrido was like, “It’s too sad.”
“Nani”
The last song of the album I decided to call “Nani” because that’s the nickname my dad gave me. I wanted to give the album a happy ending by talking about my actual relationship right now. My boyfriend calls me “baby girl,” and I just love it because it gives me this peace and it’s so loving. He’s the sweetest and I’m very happy and grateful. Then, the song transitions into me saying “daddy issues.” Even though [he’s] perfect, I’m still going to have trust issues. It closes the album with a happy ending, but I still have that darkness running through.
Tupac Shakur at the Club USA in New York City, New York, 1994.
Prosecutors Put Rap Lyrics on Trial. Maryland Is About to Shut It Down
“I’m Gucci. It’s a rap. F**k [can they do] about a rap?”
Those are the words of Lawrence Montague on a jail phone call, words that now sit at the center of a broader legal reckoning unfolding in Maryland over the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings.
Maryland prosecutors introduced Montague’s rap verse, recorded using a jailhouse telephone and later posted to Instagram as evidence of his guilt for the killing of George Forrester. In December 2020, Maryland’s highest Court ruled in Montague vs. Maryland that rap lyrics can be admitted in court as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. The Court’s treatment of the genre as inherently violent reflects a deeply flawed and biased assumption, and Montague was ultimately convicted and sentenced to fifty years.
On appeal, the state’s highest court affirmed Montague’s conviction, finding that Montague’s lyrics made it more probable that he shot and killed Forrester. In doing so, the Court embraced the very kind of bias the legal system is supposed to guard against.
That ruling set a dangerous precedent, particularly for rap and hip-hop artists in America, and prompted Variety to publish our January 2021 opinion piece. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the article would help spark a national movement — now a united front of influential academics, defense and civil rights attorneys, and prominent music industry advocacy organizations including Songwriters of North America, the Black Music Action Coalition, The Recording Academy, and more. Together, we’ve partnered under a coalition known as Free Our Art, led by high-profile music executive Kevin Liles and co-chaired by me and Prophet. Over the past few years, the coalition has built a diverse and bipartisan group of allies, urging lawmakers to act. This week, in a full circle moment, Maryland became only the third state to pass a bill reconsidering how creative works are used in criminal trials. The bill now heads to the desk of Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who is widely expected to sign it into law.
When signed, Maryland’s Protecting Artists’ Creative Expression (PACE) Act will join California and Louisiana, which enacted similar laws in 2022 and 2023 following advocacy by BMAC, SONA and later Free Our Art. Critically, the legislation establishes clear standards for when creative works may be admitted as evidence in criminal proceedings.
This law addresses a growing concern among the music industry, legal scholars, and civil rights advocates, as rap lyrics have almost exclusively been used against Black and Brown artists in more than 820 cases since the 1980s. The PACE Act seeks to limit bias in the courtroom, reinforcing First Amendment protections that are frequently overlooked today. When signed into law, the legislation would limit the use of artistic expression as evidence to narrowly defined legal circumstances. Any creative expressions the government is looking to present as evidence must be presented to the judge before a jury trial even begins. These include instances where a defendant clearly intended the work to be taken literally, where it contains specific factual details tied to an alleged offense, where it is directly relevant to a disputed issue, and where its probative value outweighs any unfair prejudice.
Race has long shaped how rap lyrics are interpreted in the legal system. Courts have often misunderstood the history, purpose, and cultural significance of rap music in America, which emerged in the 1970s in the South Bronx as a response to poverty, unemployment, gang violence, isolation from mainstream America, and unfair treatment by government institutions. Courts are starting to correct the problem — overturning convictions where rap lyrics were wrongly used — but that’s not justice, that’s damage control. We need real protection on the front end. That’s why the PACE Act matters.
And the momentum is building: New York, Georgia, and Missouri legislatures are in discussions to pass laws to defend artistic freedom and draw the line.
Black artistry deserves the same legal protection as any other form of creative expression. Yet past rulings, including the Montague case in Maryland, have left Black artists exposed to bias rooted in misunderstanding — and too often, a refusal to engage with the culture itself. Research shows that rap, a predominantly Black genre, is more likely to be seen by jurors as more threatening, more dangerous, and grounded in reality. The result: Black expression is treated as evidence of criminality, while white artists in other genres such as country music exploring similar themes are afforded creative freedom. In court, slang, generic references, and race can unfairly prejudice juries far beyond their actual probative value.
Artists such as Tupac Shakur, Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Kendrick Lamar have long used hip-hop to tell stories and challenge injustice. That tradition is central to the genre and should not be mistaken for confession. Black artists deserve the opportunity to express fear and anger and process trauma and lived experiences without that expression being used against them in court. That distinction is exactly what this legislation seeks to protect.
With the PACE Act now moving through the final stages of approval, Maryland has an opportunity to correct a longstanding imbalance in the legal system. If signed into law, it will set a clear standard — one that other states should follow.
Dina LaPolt is an entertainment attorney, activist, and co-founder of the Songwriters of North America; and Willie “Prophet” Stiggers is the chairman and CEO of the Black Music Action Coalition. Special thanks to Loyola Law School student Kayla Ruff.