Lourdes Leon Never Thought She’d Drop a Record

Lourdes Leon Never Thought She’d Drop a Record,Lourdes “Lola” Leon, who goes by the artist name Lolahol, has just released her debut EP ‘Go’ after never imagining a career as a musician — that path always felt too close to home.

Lourdes Leon Never Thought She’d Drop a Record

Lourdes Leon, who likes to go by Lola, has gotten three separate “Wassup?”s from passing skaters in the hour we’ve been sitting by the open window of Kiki’s, a Greek restaurant frequented by downtown kids and tourists in the Chinatown-adjacent wedge known as Dimes Square. (Heard of it?) “Oh my God, this area,” she says, flashing a peace sign at the latest one and rolling her eyes. “I keep seeing people I know. Ugh!” She looks over at a gentleman clutching a hardcover book like a Greek dramatist at a nearby table of three. “Is that guy reading aloud?” she mutters. “I’m gonna throw up.”

The model-choreographer-dancer and, more recently, singer — she just released her first EP, Go, under the name Lolahol — spent the past weekend in the Cayman Islands at a Halloween ball for the fashion set, where she performed her first-ever single, a moody drum-and-bass number called “Lock&Key.” Today, she arrived via subway. Our table is buried in plates of chicken and potatoes, eggplant dip, tzatziki, and a glass of sauvignon blanc.
Leon scoops up dip with pita, three nails missing from her set of silver acrylics. She used to live around here, but she much prefers Bushwick, where she lives now: It’s chill, there are no influencers or paparazzi, and everyone leaves her alone. “There’s, like, trash everywhere. I don’t mind that it’s disgusting,” she says brightly between bites. “I can go on vacation, you know what I mean? I’m privileged enough that I can do that.”

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There is an expectation that celebrities accept confrontation calmly, but that’s not really Leon’s vibe. “I don’t disrespect people, but if you come at me wrong, you better pray,” she says with a devious laugh. She got physical over a comment about her mother just once: “I was at a club spot and some dumb little bitch wanted to come up and talk some shit to me. The second my mom’s name popped out of her mouth — I don’t condone violence, but she … left.”

At Kiki’s, the late-lunch crowd is shifting to the early-dinner crowd, and Leon is becoming preoccupied with her chicken. “Can you please try this and tell me?” she says. “Yo, like, I’m not even joking; it actually tastes like feces. Am I crazy?” (She’s not.) She watches, vindicated, as the table of literature enjoyers sends their plates back untouched.

Recently, an older man asked Leon about “her plan” — as in, for life — in a way that rattled her. “I get that it might seem important, but I’m just trying to process this right now,” she says. “Obviously, I should probably, like, ‘invest in an apartment’ or, like, ‘buy property’ — that dumb shit.” Somewhere down the line, she would like to foster someone else’s art the way her friends have done for her. On the train ride to our interview, she listened to Go on her headphones and admits to getting emotional. She has never worked so hard on anything before. “Oh my God,” she says, recalling her own reaction. “Is this feeling … is this pride?”

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