’Twas the night before album release day for Lexa Gates but the New York rapper and singer was stuck, going nowhere: getting her steps in on a giant, circular treadmill, while art gallery patrons gawped at her. For 10 hours. No toilet breaks allowed, an adult nappy strapped on just in case.
This very literal take on the hamster wheel of music promotion, though, was of the prolific 24-year-old’s own devising and choosing. And, for sure, a savvy piece of music promotion, with fans, stans and rubberneckers rocking up to Jeffrey Deitch in downtown Manhattan and previewing her sixth album I Am on headphones while, from 2pm to midnight, the Queens-born artist did the same, walking and jogging and (not literally) cycling through its 18 tracks of soulful R&B and hip-hop on a never-ending loop.
Titled The Wheel, the idea behind this kinetic, art installation stunt, per the press release, was to 'reinforce the message of persistence, emotional resilience and forward motion that acts as the central theme of the record'. Or, as Gates puts it more prosaically – and appropriately repetitively – when we talk five days after her marathon stunt, 'during the process of making this album, I was going through this cycle.
'I was obsessed with some person, and I would go back to LA, and be too scared to say anything, and get upset about it, and then go back home to New York, and then cry in New York, and think: 'Oh, well, next time I'm gonna go back, and then I'm gonna really say it this time.' And then I would go back, and then I'd be too scared, and then I'd go back home. It was just cycles in life.'
Certainly, too, it highlights Gates’ truly solo artistry. Unlike most pop, R&B and hip-hop album 'projects' these days, I Am features no guest vocalists or stunt casting. As she puts it: 'This project has no features. It's just all me, chatting, forever.'
So did her unquestionably impressive achievement bring her insight and self-knowledge? Not entirely.
'It was like self-torture, honestly!' she admits with admirable lack of stoic cool. “Forty minutes in, I already wanted to get off of that thing. It hurt really bad. And... the time passed. It was just some weird dystopian thing I wanted to try. I'm surprised people were there the whole time. Actually I was waiting, hoping that people would leave and then I could just sit! But they were there, just watching me the whole time. So I had to keep on going.”
Gates has form in going the extra mile – or, even, going nowhere – to amplify the noise around her music. In October 2024, to launch her last album Elite Vessel, she sat for 10 hours in a Perspex cage in New York’s Union Square. For the duration of (Alone) In the Box she denied herself food or water. It was a purposefully ascetic choice that, like The Wheel, put this touring, constantly performing artist – momentarily at least – in control of a career that, for the young, extremely online musician in particular, is always moving. Always on.
'For sure,' says Gates. 'The Box was a more restful place where I was at peace. I didn't have to use my phone. I could just chill. But The Wheel was honestly way more. It didn't really feel like it was all in my control, because I had to keep going.'
So both art pieces, in opposite ways, comment on the realities of her day-job. She nods. They do 'reflect what you're saying about the performances and the tour. It's crazy, because when you're on stage, if you're choking up and you can't do it anymore, no one cares! You have to keep going!' she exclaims in sentiments familiar to those expressed by spotlight-weary peers such as Chappell Roan and Halsey. 'The song keeps going and it's loud and over-stimulating and people are [still] watching you. Nobody really cares if you're tired or if you want to stop.'
With their foregrounding and challenging of the creator herself, these endurance-art pieces nod to the work of Marina Abramović. Or, to Cornelia Parker’s 1995 work The Maybe, in which Tilda Swinton spent a week in glass vitrine in London’s Serpentine Gallery. But Gates says she only discovered that work after she came up with the idea for The Box.
'Honestly, I don't know anything about that stuff. All this is just silly, organic ideas. Even with The Box, they told me to make TikToks but I just thought it'd be funny to put myself in a box. Everybody always brings up Marina, but I'm not that familiar with her work.'
As we speak, I Am has only been out a week. But Gates is no slouch, having released six albums in six years. So, any thoughts on her next performance art piece?
'After just getting off of that shit, I'm thinking I'm never doing that again!” she replies, laughing. 'That was literally so bad. But I'll come up with something.'
Lexa Gates will, then, circle back to us.
I Am is out now. Lexa Gates plays the Governors Ball, in her home neighbourhood, Flushing, Queens, on 7th June