070 Shake is moseying down the streets of Manhattan’s Flatiron District alongside her Instagram-model girlfriend, Sophia Diana Lodato. The two walk arm-in-arm at a tortoise-like pace, giggling at bidets in window displays, while Lodato scrolls through designer shoes on her iPhone. Shake lovingly dotes on her partner; at the trendy vegan café where we eat lunch, she fetches Lodato a lemon poppyseed muffin, almost on command.
To the unknowing bystander, Shake seems like a normal 21-year-old, impulsively buying chocolate-dipped ice cream cones with her girlfriend on a hot day. Which basically was the case just a few weeks prior. But everything changed with her show-stopping feature on “Ghost Town,” a highlight from Kanye West’s new album, ye. Like a lot of people, Shake first learned she was on the final version of the track during Ye’s campfire listening party in Wyoming: When she heard her own bellowing voice blasting from the speakers, she jumped up into the crowd, as collaborators and celebrities lifted her up. “That was one of the best moments of my life,” she tells me, “just knowing I got my idol holding up my leg.”
Shake’s hypnotizing hooks about supernatural beings and feeling invincible ended up appearing on three of Kanye’s other recent G.O.O.D. Music projects: Pusha-T’s Daytona, Kanye and Cudi’s joint Kids See Ghosts collaboration, as well as Nas’ Nasir. It’s no wonder why Ye employed her so heavily. Shake is a shape-shifting vocalist, able to instinctively channel the angst of emo, the tenderness of gospel, and the emotionality of R&B. Through her continued presence in the recent marathon of G.O.O.D. releases, Shake has cemented her status as the label’s most versatile new member.
In conversation, Shake’s voice accelerates with excitement when discussing her work with Kanye, but she’s more cautious when talk turns to her personal life. This guardedness is a sharp contrast to the visceral lyrics in her music, which sometimes encompass the subjects of substance abuse and suicidal thoughts. On “I Laugh When I’m With Friends But I’m Sad When I’m Alone,” the opening track of her debut EP, Glitter, Shake shies away from the clichés of emo rap, instead painting a stark picture of what it’s like to be a teenage addict. “Sniffin’ shit at 14, it becomes a little hard/When you’re livin’ in a scene where the healthy shit is far/But the drugs are no further than your room or your car,” she raps towards the end of the song, sounding on the verge of tears. She then pivots sharply, singing, “Don’t be alarmed, it’ll get brighter, it’ll get better.”
Born Danielle Balbuena, Shake was raised in North Bergen, New Jersey, a diverse town that’s not known for much aside from its great view of Manhattan across the Hudson River. As a kid, her parents occasionally exposed her to salsa and bachata during backyard barbecues, but she doesn’t describe her upbringing as especially musical. Instead, she was a notorious street baller, adopting her nickname from a play called “shake weave.” She hung around a competitive group of boys, but she had no problems holding her own because, as she says, “I beat their ass in basketball.”
Together, she and her crew would get into trouble by egging houses, stealing things, and “a lot” more that she declines to detail. She knew she could be a star because she got everyone’s attention as a class clown—even if her jokes sometimes got her suspended. “I once stole frogs from the science department and pretended they were cookies,” she describes with a mischievous grin. “Then I would put them in a box and be like, ‘Cookies for sale’—and the girls would look in and get scared.”
Shake’s childhood antics stressed out her mom, a Dominican immigrant who worked security for a local elementary school. “I don’t think I gave her a chance to be proud of me, because I was just bad,” she recalls, admitting that she had a problem with authority from the start. Her refusal to be boxed in also carried over to her gender identity and sexuality. She acknowledges that she’s always operated outside of a traditional gender binary, but prefers to not ascribe to any labels. “I don’t really identify myself as queer or gay or anything,” she says. “I just like girls.”
In high school, Shake started writing poetry as a way to distract herself in class. Then, in 2015, she googled “Drake type beats” on YouTube and just started reciting those poems on top of whatever she could find. The first song she ever wrote, “Proud,” was clearly indebted to Toronto’s gloomy sound, its drug-fueled nihilism reminiscent of the Weeknd. She posted the track onto SoundCloud, and it racked up thousands of streams.
While she was working on her own material, Shake teamed up with her local friends to put together the 070 crew, a music collective named after North Bergen’s 07047 zip code. Together, they started to gain some internet buzz, but Shake was the clear standout among the group. Her swift ascent led her to open on tour for British rockers the 1975 with only a couple of self-released solo tracks to her name. In 2016, Shake’s music made its way to the ears of people at G.O.O.D. Music, and she signed to the label—only a year after she rapped for the first time.
Now, she’s working on her debut album, tentatively called Yellow Girl. She doesn’t have any specific details to reveal yet, but she’s already thinking about the effect the project is going to have on her listeners. “It’s gonna feel comforting,” she says. When I ask her what that means, she lets an aloof smile creep across her face. “It will just be there for everybody that listens to it.”
070 Shake: I really loved Alicia Keys; she taught me how to sing. Lauryn Hill. John Mayer. Paramore—I wanted to dye my hair and be like Hayley Williams. Michael Jackson. My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” was one of my favorite songs: [sings] “When I was a young boy/My father took me into the city.” That shit turns up crazy. And Queen was one of my biggest inspirations too. I want to be the Freddie Mercury of my generation—he’s a Gemini in his music, always switching up shit.
I go with what I feel. Literally. It’s the weirdest thing, but it’s like the words just literally come out of me. Maybe once in a while I’ll think of a concept, but for the most part I just go into the studio with what I feel at that moment.
He would ask me for my thoughts—not just like musically, but on different subjects that had nothing to do with music, at first. And then he was like, “Oh, what do you think about this song?” And I’d be like, “Yo, I like this but I think this could be like this,” and I would just add my part to it. My style. He would have everybody add their style onto the songs, so he had a bunch of different styles to work with.
Everybody’s like yeah, “You don’t bleed if you do that.” Well, if you put it there long enough you’re gonna bleed, bro! I swear if you put it there long enough that shit bubbles up. It’s funny because my actual lyric was, “To see if I still feel.” And then Ye was like, “I want you to say bleed.”
I had done it in English originally. Then we all went into Ye’s room and we were trying to figure the hook out, and they’re like, “You got to do it exactly like the sample,” and the sample was in Portuguese. So I’m like, “Why don’t I just do it in Spanish?” And then Ye was like, “That actually could be a good idea.” So I tried it in Spanish and it was fire as fuck.
Then, the night before the release party for Pusha’s album, I was with Ye, and he’s like, “Oh, the sample didn’t get cleared for ‘Santeria.’ You got to do a whole different melody. We need it by tonight.” So I’m like, “OK. Let’s go.” And I did that shit in less than an hour—just came up with a new melody. Recording Pusha’s album was the coolest memory I have of being out there.
I learned I need better drums. [laughs]
No. But I am a firm believer in God, and Jesus is my idol. I wake up and I want to be like him everyday. Because he just moves so fresh, you feel me? Nobody moves like him. You telling me someone could slap you and you give them the other cheek? That’s what takes actual strength and power and self control, because it’s easy to get mad and act on your emotions. But preserving that energy and transforming it into something positive takes skill and total control. It’s not so much the physical form of Jesus but his way of life that I’m so obsessed over.
My music isn’t anger—it’s me transforming my anger into something beautiful. I don’t want any hate in my music.
No, I don’t. That’s why having people around you that support you and understand you is the most important thing, because if you don’t, then you’re in an ocean with sharks. You cross this certain line, and it’s all money. And when it’s all money, it’s like you’re dealing with robots.
