Genre-defying artist Lady Midnight confronts addiction, grief, and her Afro-Caribbean roots in latest album

Afro-Caribbean artist Adriana Rimpel, known as Lady Midnight , brought the spirit of Indigenous resilience and defiance to the Twin Cities music scene when she took the stage in 2010. One evening, she’d channel the fiery spirit of Latin icons like Ceilia Cruz, her voice a siren song above the rumba and merengue rhythms of the Afro-Caribbean band Malamanya . Another evening, she could be found performing as the lead singer of Vandaam , an electro-pop “galactic trio” with the producers Adept and Sloslylove .

But in 2016, she released a five-song EP under the name “Parables of Neptune.” The songs, created by Rimpel and producer Afrokeys , were dreamy and ethereal electronic R&B music — a glimpse into the artist’s signature sound that merges heartbreak and dance floor euphoria.

“I had always wanted to sing my own songs, but I was just not confident at the time,” Rimpel said. “After being in that Afro-Cuban band and the electronic group, I realized that it was more important to me to sing my own stories than anyone else’s.”

It was a story and sound rooted in her rich musical heritage. Rimpel, 40, was born in St. Paul’s West Side, raised by her mother, Pamela Zeller, a Mexican woman with Aztec heritage, who led the salsa band Sabroson. Her Haitian father, Kedner Rimpel, was a drummer until he was murdered in a drug-related shooting when she was 13.

Rimpel poured her artistic energy into dance, training extensively in tap, ballet, and jazz at St. Paul’s Spectrum Dance school. After graduating with a degree in photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she found her voice with Malamanya.

Despite Malamanya’s success, a desire for creative control and artistic freedom led Rimpel to depart from the band after four years. “There can be a lot of sadness and grief around leaving a group,” she said. “But there’s also a lot of excitement with being able to have more ownership about the art that I want to create, which wasn’t Cuban music.”

In addition to pursuing her solo career, Rimpel has been empowering youth through music and identity exploration at Red Lake Indian Reservation, working with Black, Indigenous, and youth of color. In April, she led a week-long songwriting residency for seventh-graders.

This summer, she will teach music at the Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment’s (WISE) “Getting Girls Ahead in Leadership” program. The initiative aims to empower young immigrant and refugee girls and nonbinary youth in grades six through 12.

“It’s all about building confidence, overcoming fear or anxiety to be vulnerable, and forming creative strategies when faced with complex issues,” she said. “If participants feel inspired to continue music after our workshop, I absolutely support that but my goal is to help them practice pushing themselves past comfort in a low-risk environment so they can advocate for themselves in higher-risk situations.”

Coming from a multicultural background, Rimpel felt the pressure to represent not just herself but an entire community. She grappled with the expectation to uphold traditions, pave the way for others, and achieve a certain level of “acceptability,” while yearning to create music that reflected her own identity.

“I think that’s colonialism and white supremacy at work,” she said. “Like ‘look at me! I’m acceptable. I have a degree and I’m doing all these kinds of things,’ but I think for me, the music that I make is going to be inherently Black, Latino, and Indigenous because that’s just who I am.”

A decade-long collaboration

In 2012, at a house party in Brooklyn, New York, Rimpel met producer Ziyad Habib , a collaborator that would shape her future sound of cinematic and evocative instrumentals.

“There were a bunch of people who neither I nor Adriana knew or vibed with, and we ended up just kind of hanging out in a side room and working on music at the party,” Habib said. “We didn’t actually finish the track we started but it was a good connection. It sparked something between us.”

When Habib sent Rimpel the instrumentals he had been working on in 2014,  she poured her emotions into what became “Lightness,” the closing track on her debut album “Death Before Mourning” in 2019.

“I remember listening to it and just crying like a baby,” Habib said. “It was like she understood what I was going through and put it better than I ever could have, and she put her own truth to it as well.”

The song sparked a decade-long friendship between the two, traveling back and forth from the Midwest and the East Coast to collaborate.

“Our relationship is so interesting,” he said. “We rarely see each other, but there’s an understanding and trust. When we do fly out to each other, we work from sunup to sundown and then into the wee hours of the morning. We just work well together.”

Through dreamy synth-pop beats, experimental soundscapes, and minimalistic ballads, “Death Before Mourning” became an introspective exploration of personal empowerment, healing, and Indigenous resistance.

“It’s really cool to see her progression and the way her vibe and aesthetic has changed, but her voice is consistent,” Habib said. “The first LP was a bit introspective and down-tempo and dealing with some really heavy stuff, but I think there’s a lot of deeper things she talks about in her new LP.”

Rimpel celebrated the release of her sophomore album “Pursuit & the Elusive,” at First Avenue with Habib, producer Hooks , and DJ Cassiopeia in May 2024. She was also the opening act for Minneapolis rapper-singer Dessa in November 2023, performing at venues like First Avenue and Orchestra Hall.

While her debut album laid the groundwork, “Pursuit & the Elusive,” released in October 2023 and produced by Twin Cities producers Lazerbeak and Icetep , tackles themes of grief, addiction, self-discovery, and the unresolved trauma of losing her father.

“I never talked about my father [in “Death Before Mourning”] because I didn’t feel ready,” Rimpel said. “It wasn’t until I released that album that I realized that I was addressing other pain and other grief, which eventually created more space to address the grief around losing my father.”

The album’s title track is a companion piece to an upcoming virtual reality film of the same name, where Rimpel plays the lead role. Rimpel aims to debut the film this year at various film festivals before its official release. It was shot at renowned local landmarks such as First Avenue, Mancini’s Char House, and Meister’s Bar and Grill.

The film tells the story of a detective who’s in pursuit of a shapeshifting assailant that she believed murdered her father. “She sort of realizes that the culprit might not be who she thinks it is, or the revenge she’s seeking isn’t going to bring her peace,” Rimpel said. “I think people can feel like they’re responsible in some ways to either seek revenge or to live a life that is not only theirs, but is also the life that was lost. I think there’s a lot of survivor’s guilt that can happen.”

In “Pursuit & the Elusive,” we encounter the singer in medias res, laying bare her spiritual struggle: “When it’s hard to find a way, hard to find your place, slow down and wait and you will find it. You will find it in your voice, knowing that you hold a story still untold,” she sings on “Take Shape in Your Love.”

This introspective mood doesn’t last long. Lady Midnight throws us onto the dance floor in the track “Tide Over,” exploring the use of substances as a temporary escape from pain.

“It’s this idea of getting by,” she said. “In the music industry, musicians get paid in alcohol. We get drink tickets as part of our compensation, so it’s really encouraged for artists to engage with substances, and it doesn’t seem abnormal.” When music venues closed down during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,  Rimpel said, “it sparked this personal journey around looking at my own habits and where they stem from.”

Rimpel isn’t afraid to confront the difficult aspects of her journey. The song “Father, Figure” tackles her complicated relationship with her father head-on, weaving electronic synths and an up-tempo dance beat with lyrics that cut straight to the heart.

“Will you stay for the last time? Guess I’m not enough to stop, you’ll do it again,” she sings, capturing the cycle of disappointment and hope that often accompanies relationships affected by addiction.

Songs like “Stormborn” further reflect on the impact of addiction and her relationship with her father: “You remind me of a love that I once knew and he left too soon too. And I’ve tried to save him the same way that I tried with you.”

“Stormborn is, to me, the most important song on the album,” Rimpel said. “I entered these friendships or romantic relationships because I had curiosity around what felt familiar with my father. I wanted to understand a world of partying, a world of addiction, and [wanted] to know like, why was it worth it? Was this so much fun that it cost your life and family?”

As she explored these relationships and behaviors, Rimpel realized that her attempts to connect with her father’s experiences were leading her down a path of self-destruction.

The journey brought her to a poignant understanding: “Sometimes we want to be close to people who we’ve lost through addiction by taking those things up for them, but that didn’t bring me closer to them, it brought me farther away from me,” she said.

“The story is so personal and kind of heavy, and that’s something I’m used to listening to,” she said. “Growing up, listening to salsa or merengue, it’s this super energetic, jovial dance music, but it’s paired with the history of slavery and uprisings, and these things that the community is going through. It feels so natural to put those things together because it feels like a way to be able to heal.”

The album’s closer, “… & the Elusive,” captures the feeling of walking home after a long night out. The sun is rising, a sense of accomplishment lingers, but you know the journey is far from over. With swirling synths, fast-paced drumming patterns, and the background sounds of traffic and people laughing, the track pulls you back into reality.

“Healing is a practice. Happiness is a practice,” Rimpel said. “But don’t let that discourage you as you’re excavating these difficult memories. Just say, ‘I don’t have to carry this anymore.’ And I didn’t even realize that I was, you know? Like ‘How did this get in here? This isn’t mine.’”

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