Cinnamon Babe is a nu metal/rock/hip-hop act spearheaded by Stormi Maya, a model and social media influencer. The band debuted a new song through MetalSucks called “Pure O,” which explores Maya’s struggles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The song makes for an incredible work that not only sounds awesome, but also shines a light on a very serious aspect of mental illness.
But while the song is both heartfelt and heavy as hell, Maya found negativity being directed her way. As MetalSucks reports in an exclusive interview with the Cinnamon Babe frontwoman, Maya found folks coming at her on social media questioning her personnel choices.
In the interview with the publication, Maya shares that her musical upbringing involved My Chemical Romance and Paramore, as well as Van Halen, Aerosmith, and old Motown. Getting into metal, she came to enjoy Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Linkin Park.
In the interview, Maya speaks to growing up with music, the mentality of “metal purists,” and much more. When asked if she thinks it is cool that nu metal (and hip-hop in metal) has made a come back in recent years, Maya responded with the following:
“It’s weird, because there are a lot of gatekeepers or whatever you want to call them, who are just afraid of the future, of what metal might look like. They probably have nostalgia for what they grew up with. They’ve seen it with hip hop. Because if you think about old-school hip hop, and you think about the days of Mobb Deep and Big L and Big Pun, hip hop was at one point very sculpted to the culture, and had messages in it that were for the culture, and it represented something — and then the mainstream turned rap music into pop. The image of it completely changed, from the stripper-ish image of women to gangster young kids running around, doing trap shit. I think that a lot of metal purists are afraid of that same transition happening. They’re afraid of a lot of bimbo hot chicks and young kids taking over. But what’s funny about metal and alternative music is, like, I was always under the impression that it was for people who never felt like they fit in. I always felt like kind of a weirdo, an introverted person who no one understood. That’s why I was attracted to this genre in the first place. And then I tried to get into it, and I couldn’t get in! Now I’m an outsider in something that was supposed to be for outsiders.”
You can check out the Cinnamon Babe music video for “Pure O” below, as well as Stormi Maya’s interview with MetalSucks here.
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Words by: Michael Pementel
