The Musically Gifted LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell
LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell
In this profile series, Revry is highlighting authentic contributors to the LGBTQ media and entertainment community. We ask questions to find out who they are and where they are going in the future. The questions remain the same but the answers tell their unique story. It’s time to explore and celebrate true representation beyond the limits of Hollywood.
LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell has long been featured and praised in the music industry for her talents as a musician, music producer, and sound engineer, having worked with major label studios and more recently as an independent artist under the moniker “Lafemmebear.” As an up-and-coming producer, Mitchell worked alongside producers for Boyz II Men, Grammy-winners The Jackie Boyz, Eric Dawkins of The Underdogs, and Interscope Records producers from Nelly’s songwriting team. When she came out as a transgender woman in 2013, she was effectively blacklisted from the industry despite her skill and accomplishments, including a 2012 Grammy nomination for album engineering. This only prompted Mitchell to take her music into her own hands under the name Lafemmebear in 2018. The arrival of her first indie release, BLAQ* A NOTE TO THE WORLD, showed that her sound has evolved into a genre-blending experience speaking to the trials of Black queer, trans femmes. The music video for the EP single "SHUTUP! (ft. Bella King)" premiered on Billboard.com in March of 2019; she subsequently became the first Black trans woman to headline the state of Utah's Pride Festival in June, performing original music to an audience of over 60,000. Her words and work have since been featured by Esquire, NPR Music, The Guardian, MTV News, GLAAD, Out.Tv Euro, and the Toronto Star. Her first full album, BLAQ: THE STORY OF ME, premiered Fall 2019. In 2020 she collaborated with PEG Records, Cody Belew, and Dustin Ransom to co-write and produce the first mainstream Pop-R&B single “What You’re Looking For” for RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE’s Peppermint. She and Peppermint later collaborated with Mila Jam in a remake of Sounds of Blackness' "Optimistic," an anthem for Trans Day of Remembrance 2020. In February 2021 she opened for Chika at Stanford University’s Black Love concert, premiering songs from her new EP titled My Blaq Feels. She co-composed and sound designed the original score for Alice Sheppard and Kinetic Light’s new work WIRED, which will premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2022. In October 2021, LeahAnn "Lafemmebear" Mitchell became the first Black trans woman to produce a record on a Top Ten charting album with "I'm a Survivor (Lafemmebear Remix)" on Reba's REVIVED, REMIXED, REVISITED. In addition to her music projects, Lafemmebear produces and directs the documentary series WE SEE YOU: BLACK TRANS LIVING LEGENDS, which focuses on preserving the legacies of living Black queer and trans elders.
What are you best known for?
Probably "I'm a Survivor (Lafemmbear Remix)" which I produced last summer as part of Reba McEntire's new REVIVED, REMIXED, REVISITED collection. Because of that remix, I'm now the first ever Black trans woman to produce a record on a Billboard Top Ten-charting album.
What is the first thing you worked on?
I started professionally songwriting for a label in St. Louis at the age of fourteen.
What are you working on that no one knows about yet?
Mya Byrne (she played lap steel and mandolin on the "I'm a Survivor" remix) and I are releasing some new music this year that's going to test the bounds of the country and folk genres - more accurately, it'll test the allyship of the white country audience. There's a Black and queer revolution happening for sure in the country music scene, which is long overdue especially since country music originated with Black folks. Now that we're claiming what we started and what we gave these white country artists, the blueprints to this music style, some folks aren't happy and they're showing it. So we will see what happens.