“King Princess is a bottom?”
I asked my friend in between photographing Mikaela Strauss who wore a black crop top with bedazzled fringes and purple cargo pants, iconic. My friend AJ and I talked between bites of the fried catfish from Trap Kitchen, the restaurant downstairs in the lobby of the Roseland Theater when they declared that they were indeed a bottom on the stage of the sold-out show. A room full of fellow queers sang along to their anticipated album Hold On Baby, to start the night after both opening acts from artist Em Beihold and local drag queen Flawless Shade.
So if that doesn’t paint a picture of how the concert went then I don’t know what will. Despite never having heard King Princess before it was an amazing show!
Mikaela Straus (she/they/it), who performs under the name King Princess, lit up the room as people watched in awe, cried, sang along, and danced like it was a reverie. You could feel the energy in the room, and it was undeniably queer.
I soon found myself dancing with my friend, camera in hand, and lost myself in the electric sounds of their instruments that defied and challenged the usual conventions of both rock and pop music that echoed the emotions of self-realization, not fitting within the binary, being queer and free, and just saying f–k this feeling. Being nonbinary and queer myself I resonated a lot with the feeling of struggling with your identity in a world that constantly tells you who you need to be, who you need to love, and how you need to act.
I was an immediate fan.
I immensely enjoyed their single “Pussy Is God,” and their newest song “Cursed” from their album Hold On Baby and both were great in live performance. After the concert and on the way home on the MAX, I listened to “Talia” on repeat that night and still felt the magic I felt in that room with King Princess.
How am I supposed to go to work now after that performance? I asked my friend what they thought of the entire concert and they responded that “It was amazing!”
Follow King Princess on Instagram // Listen to ‘Hold On Baby’ on Spotify // Visit King Princess’s Website
