Portraits Of Tracy

Portraits of Tracy (she/they) is forging the next evolution of pop music that demands the world to meet it. Emerging as a self-taught experimental music icon with her 2023 album Drive Home - an extraordinary statement of autonomy and sonic freedom - the project is helmed by 20-year-old producer and multi-instrumentalist Tracy Amare. The 18-track concept record tracks the odyssey of main character Junie by frantically whipping between elements of classic rock, hip-hop, R&B, soul, and psychedelic indie rock. These wide-ranging influences are assembled into unconventional, frenzied structures that release into transcendent emotion. Drive Home’s unbounded and vivid sound captures Tracy’s own tumultuous journey of finding her voice and starting her own life as a Black, queer teen raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Drive Home is dense and meticulous, with a dash of manic energy that could only come from an online music prodigy who found early inspiration in 90s & 2000s countercultures, taught herself how to produce as a child. Joined by a cast of voice actors, Tracy performs witty dialogue as Junie—on top of rapping, singing, recording, producing, and composing the entirety of Drive Home. But beneath the surface, the album’s narrative serves as an analogy for Tracy’s own journey in accepting herself as transgender, with all of its ego deaths and shattering of expectations—of herself, of her family, and of society at large.