The way that the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated bands and touring artists' livelihoods is a sting that’s still fresh. The return of concerts, tours, and festivals can still feel like greasing up the chain on an old bike that was resting dormant in a shed. Twin Cities experimental hip-hop group Moodie Black was no exception to the rule. They were on the cusp of embarking on a tour of Europe when their third album, Fuzz, was released in March of 2020.

“For the first couple days of everything being canceled from COVID, I'm like, ‘Ah, that sucks, hopefully that doesn't happen to us,’' Moodie Black lead vocalist Kristen Martinez recalls. “Then literally the next day, everybody couldn't fly, and our album was coming out that Friday.” Before we get to what’s changed, let’s venture back.

Moodie Black was formed by Martinez when she was going to school at Cochise College, located in the middle of the desert in Southern Arizona. At the time, she was going to school for basketball, with the hopes of becoming a Division I player. The experience itself was dismal, to say the least. “There were these small, terrible concrete dorm rooms that no one would be living in. The only reason we were doing this was because I was playing basketball at the time, and you think you're going to do what you do to get opportunities to play at the next level,” Martinez remembers. “So you go through this hell in the middle of nowhere, and it's miserable.”

It was during that time when Martinez grew a love for hip-hop. “The way I found time to exist was through learning how to produce, and digging in crates in Bisbee, Arizona, buying old records, and going back home to practice sampling for hours, and learning on my own. I learned everything from a hip-hop base. So everything about me, my whole foundation, is hip-hop,” Kristen noted.

Once the template for Moodie Black was formed, hopes of finding community within music was quickly dashed. “I thought you just made music, and if you're good, you talk to people and say, ‘I want to get on shows,’ and I approached it with this earnest honesty. I learned really quickly about the industry, even in the underground world, doesn't work like that. I got disenfranchised and disenchanted really quickly.”

The need to connect with like-minded fans and musicians still lingered, but self-preservation and the ability to keep the tunnel vision laser focused kept Moodie Black thriving, no matter how insular its focus became. “I feel like I've always had a hole there, I always felt like I was falling short,” she says. “My whole career was built on people saying I have a lot of potential. So I had to learn how to take pride in my own stuff, because others weren't.”

Projects like 2011’s Sana Sana under the group’s former name Gahedindie, and Lucas Acid helped Moodie Black connect with like-minded artists such as Dälek, and the label that has been home for the majority of their discography, Fake Four Inc.

With each album, Moodie Black continues a consistent, yet trying, effort of destroying, rebuilding, and reinventing, wowing audiences and listeners as one of the more forward thinking acts in music. Whereas “noise rap” can be seen as niche to those that choose to listen to it, Moodie Black has been present during its entire timeline, from its invention to its prominence, and is seen as one of the most innovative acts in the genre. Along with guitarist Sean Lindahl, who has been friends with Martinez since high school, and the recent addition of their drummer Bentley Monet of Snailmate, they’ve formed a stage show that is truly a lively and invigorating experience.

Being a band with a nose to the grindstone and head to the stars mentality, Moodie Black does whatever it can to supplement for lost revenue that would have been generated during pandemic lockdown time. Like most bands, Moodie Black did a series of livestreams and spawned a podcast known as the Moodhouse Podcast to help salvage whatever they could shortly after the release of 2020’s Fuzz.

During the pandemic, Martinez sank her focus on a series of taco pop-ups known as MB Foodhouse. Over the past couple years, it went from a small pickup window with limited service hours to a space in the North Loop Galley in Minneapolis, connecting Kristen’s culinary and cultural heritage of delectably done Tex-Mex cuisine. Additionally, the Moodhouse Podcast netted a connection with Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells, who ended up being a guest. Her appearance on that episode of the Moodhouse Podcast led to Moodie Black opening up for three dates on Sleigh Bells’ tour.

“Alexis knew from our podcast conversation and looked into our music, and Alexis hit me up randomly one day, and asked if we lived in Texas,” Kristen remembers. “So I told her, ‘We don't live in Texas, but we're from Texas, and could do anything in Texas.’ So they offered a few dates on the Texas leg of their tour.”

The connection with Sleigh Bells, touring Europe, and grinding through a majority of every venue in the Twin Cities, and starting their own Moodhouse Fest in 2019 all have paved the way for Moodie Black to serve as opening support for Puscifer (led by Maynard James Keenan of Tool) through their North American tour. After 11 years of endless persistence, the group brings their brand of distorted, damaged and dissonant hip-hop to St. Paul’s Palace Theatre opening for Puscifer on Sunday, July 3. 

All the while, Martinez has kept track of all the important lessons, especially after the pandemic put a dangerous pause on a good chunk of their efforts.

“It feels full circle,” Martinez reflects. “I'm proud of Moodie Black. I'm happy that I stepped away from it, and it came back with MB Foodhouse the way it happened. I'll continue to take that ethos. Even after this tour, as a musician I've been harping a lot on what the next thing is after touring, but I’m taking the time now to enjoy the opportunity. While I'm happy, there's still a lot left to prove.”

What the future holds for Moodie Black after their tour is still a bigger question, but Martinez knows where it goes next. “I hope that with this tour under our belt, we can make more of an impact, especially locally in Minneapolis,” she says. “There's a lot more vibrancy and color here, and I do want to make sure if I have any influence, that at least I'm highlighting that. There's a lot more Princes to be discovered in Minneapolis.”

Moodie Black open for Puscifer at Palace Theatre on Sunday, July 3. Tickets