Trickster Magazine

Matriarkaatti was originally born out of a need for peer support when we were both still emerging artists in a male-dominated field. We needed a space to vent about things our male collaborators couldn’t fully understand, even if they were “one of the good ones.”
The Finnish rap scene has a lot of boys’ clubs that women don’t have access to, so we wanted to create a club of our own.
Matriarkaatti started out as a podcast on SoundCloud, where we explored the history of women in Finnish rap. We realized in real time that there had been many artists before us who were erased from the history books because of the “there can only be one female rapper at a time” trope. Soon after, we began organizing open mics and club nights that highlighted female, non-binary, and transmasculine artists. Creating Matriarkaatti’s collaborative album was a natural continuation of our other work together – we’d been reflecting on the same themes and vibing with the same music for a long time.

Matriarkaatti represents an alternative.
Patriarchy fucks everybody up, but luckily there’s Matriarkaatti (it’s also our slogan in Finnish: “Patriarkaatti sortaa kaikkia, onneksi on Matriarkaatti”). We’re just two bosses running laps around many of our male colleagues (and Nora actually used to be a competitive runner, so it’s not just a metaphor).
Honestly, women have been dominating Finnish rap for a while now – even if the mainstream and some stubborn underground heads haven’t caught on yet.

We’re both overachievers. We set high standards for ourselves and always have a lot – let’s be honest, too much – going on.
Maybe we’ve also built an image of being very articulate and rational people, and keeping that up has started to feel heavy. In a creative context, it stopped being inspiring.
When we released our first solo tracks, misogyny often showed up as criticism of women’s technical skills in rap – or supposedly the lack of them. That focus on technical perfection and avoiding mistakes really sank in, and at times we lost the fun of making music.
With this album, we wanted writing songs to feel fun again, and for the bar not to be fucking high all the time. We’ve always been drawn to scrappiness as an aesthetic, and it would be a shame if we couldn’t take part in that ourselves.

We mainly make music for ourselves and our friends – the kind of music we want to listen to. During this process, we kept thinking about what it is that only we, or Matriarkaatti specifically, could say.
The original backbone of the album was written on the last Z train of the night from Lahti to Helsinki. The idea was to make a themed album about resistance and breaking laws and rules. Many of those original ideas made it onto the record, but as we kept writing, other layers started to emerge.
Alongside rule-breaking themes, the lyrics also reflected what was going on in our own lives at the time: a longing to go back to partying, being silly, and just enjoying rap again. For us, Rikosrekisteri isn’t just about literally breaking the law – it’s also about saying and being things you’re not really supposed to say or be. One example is the line “I hate men,” which we wanted partly because it’s so loaded and also kind of a cliché. That tension felt interesting.

We don’t think that as Matriarkaatti we’re expected to be a certain kind of feminist, but at some point there was increasing pressure for us to take a stand on issues in the music industry. People were straight-up demanding it in our DMs.
On our previous album, released in 2022, we were almost exclusively dealing with feminist themes. With this record, that approach didn’t feel as fruitful anymore. During the process of making Rikosrekisteri, we talked a lot about class society, how culture is valued, and the rise of fascism.
We’re constantly updating our understanding of different forms of oppression and growing as feminists. Even though we didn’t try to make Rikosrekisteri a specifically feminist album, feminism is still the framework through which we understand the world – so of course it shines through in what we do.

We created our own creative bubble a while ago and honestly haven’t listened to male rappers in years, so we’re probably not the right people to ask. From our perspective, feminist, queer, and femme artists have been making the most exciting rap. Most guys are pretty boring – excluding the ones we’re already friends with – so not all men (are bad rappers)!

For us, success means being able to surround ourselves with dope things and cool people. Doing interesting collaborations and playing shows to packed crowds, no matter how big or small the venue. We’ve built a super sexy community that still has room for more people. The more, the merrier – but never quantity over quality.
At its purest, success is writing songs and bars we’re genuinely excited about. On the flip side, no kind of success feels good if you’re not hyped about the work you’re doing – though we can’t really relate to that, since we only make bangers.

Nora: We should enjoy albums more – long form for the win. It’s only 28 minutes, so just listen to the whole thing.

Kirsikka: Album format will never die!! But if you want to loop one track after listening from beginning to end, make it “Partygirl.” We stole the beat from Stepa (allegedly), and it was the last song we recorded for the album. I cried during the studio session, but a true partygirl never quits – and now we have a song to prove it.

Nora: More fun times! More rest! Spotify dies! Our government collapses!

Kirsikka: Great gigs and cute puppies. I also hope Spotify dies, that Palestine will be free, and that Israel will have to pay for its crimes against humanity – and that the Finns Party gets kicked out of the government, if it doesn’t collapse entirely.

Listen to Rikosrekisteri

Spotify
Apple Music
Tidal

Links to individual tracks are also available upon request via email (matriarkaatti@gmail.com) or Instagram DM (@matriarkaatti).

Interview and photography by Eva-Liisa Orupõld
Clothes by Pali Albin