Lin Que Ayoung, known professionally as Lin Que and formerly as Isis, is a female
hip-hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...
artist.
Biography
Lin Que graduated from
Cathedral High School in Manhattan. She released her debut album ''Rebel Soul'' under the name Isis while affiliated with
X-Clan in 1990. She was a member of the hip-hop collective known as the Blackwatch Movement (which included X Clan). On Billboard.com, Andy Kellman Rovi believed that since Professor X took the mic after almost every verse, it was an X-Clan album in every sense but the name. According to an AllMusic Review by Alex Henderson, Isis "showed a lot of potential on Rebel Soul, which proves that her rapping skills were strong and that her technique was excellent."
Lin Que left X-Clan and later began to work with
MC Lyte
Lana Michele Moorer (born October 11, 1970), better known by her stage name MC Lyte, is an American rapper. Considered one of the pioneers of female rap, MC Lyte first gained fame in the late 1980s, becoming the first female rapper to release a ...
. Now rhyming under her birth name Lin Que, and released a couple of singles for
Ruffhouse/
and
EastWest Records America. She eventually went into A&R work and graphic design, and she appeared briefly in ''
Juice'',
Ted Demme's ''
Who's the Man?'' and
Spike Lee's ''
He Got Game''.
She collaborated with various artists such as
Will Downing
Wilfred "Will" Downing (born November 29, 1963) is an American R&B, soul, neo soul, and jazz singer and songwriter. He has released 22 studio albums.
Biography Early life
Downing was born and raised to a working-class family in Bedford-Stuy ...
,
Mary J. Blige,
Queen Latifah,
MC Lyte
Lana Michele Moorer (born October 11, 1970), better known by her stage name MC Lyte, is an American rapper. Considered one of the pioneers of female rap, MC Lyte first gained fame in the late 1980s, becoming the first female rapper to release a ...
,
Steele of
Smif-N-Wessun,
The Beatnuts,
Monifah,
Ce Ce Peniston,
Joi Cardwell, and more.
She had a brief stint as a member of the
Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop collective formed in Staten Island, New York City, in 1992. Its members include RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and, until his death in 2004, O ...
-affiliated group
Deadly Venoms. In ''Billboard Magazine'' Vol. 110, No. 8, the all female group planned "to function as a female collective independent of any male overseers." After leaving the group for business reasons shortly after its debut album was recorded and never released, she remained writing and creating music with producers Sugar Al Cayne, Azteknique, and Ayatollah. She has written for MC Lyte and has been producing music as well.
Lin Que released an album titled ''GODspeed'' in 2007.
In 2011, Lin Que decided to go back to college. She majored in Film at
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...
. At Hunter, she became a two-time winner of the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...
New York Scholarship.
In the fall of 2015, Lin Que was accepted into the
NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program. She graduated from
NYU with a concentration in Writing & Directing in May 2020.
Discography
Albums
*''Rebel Soul'', 4th & B’way/Island Records 444 030 (North America) / 848 438 (international), 1990
*''GODspeed'', UniverseWorks (self-released), 2007
Singles
*"Rebel Soul", 4th & B'way/Island Records, 1990
*"The Power of Myself Is Moving", 4th & B'way/Island Records, 1991
*"This Is It" b/w "Rip It Up", Ruffhouse/Columbia Records, 1993
*"Let It Fall" b/w "Parley", EastWest Records America, 1995
References
External links
Interview in ''Insomniac'' magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lin Que
Living people
African-American women rappers
21st-century American women rappers
Elektra Records artists
Island Records artists
Wu-Tang Clan affiliates
Rappers from Queens, New York
East Coast hip-hop musicians
21st-century American rappers
1969 births