About – nikkilynette.com

NAME LENGTH AVAILABLE ON

My Mind Ain't Right

3:15

Nobody Loves Me

3:09

STFU Boy

4:01

Glory Box

3:57

Mermaid ft Jav June

3:16

Young & Dumb ft I Fight Dragons

3:12

Praying to a God I Don't Believe In

3:57

Move the World

3:25

NIKKI LYNETTE is a social impact artist & suicide survivor who fuses mental health activism into her musical theater performances, film projects and visual art, creating a lane that is uniquely her own. This Chicago native’s self-produced songs can be heard in popular shows on Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and more. Her journey with mental health outreach began in 2016 when she returned to the public eye after a long hiatus with a confession: she’d secretly been battling mental health issues. In a time when being open about mental health struggles was taboo, Nikki began writing articles about depression and suicide for prominent media like Afropunk and AllHipHop. As the opening act for Pussy Riot’s first American tour, Nikki workshopped the material that would soon become her buzzed-about new musical about depression, GET OUT ALIVE. In 2019, Nikki made history as the first black female playwright to have a musical produced by American Music Theatre Project, in 2022 she became the first Steppenwolf LookOut Series work and first female AMTP alum to be featured at NAMT’s Festival of New Musicals, and in 2024 Nikki Lynette became the first American Playwright to be invited to Cove Park’s Musical Theatre Writing Residency in Scotland. The stage show is currently in development, in partnership with Octopus Theatricals. A proud ambassador and board member for the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Nikki Lynette’s first TEDx Talk, hosted by Princeton University, was an opportunity for her to share how her punk culture roots aided her suicide recovery. Over the years as she showcased her fine art in galleries and her music used to tell stories in hit TV shows, she began to explore how these different mediums of art function in conversation with one another. She has evolved her practice to blend new media with more classic art forms such as song, performance art, set design & documentary film. After adapting her musical about depression to film during the pandemic, Nikki put her zeal for crafting edgy multimedia theatrical experiences that center mental health on full display in her second film, the new documusical entitled “Happy Songs About Unhappy Things,” which boasts Jamie Foxx & Datari Turner as producers. Nikki Lynette is represented by Independent Artist Group.

I didn’t wanna do music no more. I mean, I kinda wanted to, but I thought it would be too hard to start over. You spend a lot of time out the game and everything changes. What I wanted was to not be here. I would wake up and be disappointed that I was awake, and just lay there for an hour before I could get outta bed. I spent a lot of time in bed. I only pushed myself to get better because of my momma. She was sick, and she needed me. So I pushed myself. I didn’t have much support, because the stigma around mental health leaves a lot of room for lack of understanding, a lot of room for judgement, a lot of room for shame.

I realized that my music career, by itself, was not enough of a motivator for me no more. I am motivated by people. Particularly people whose needs are underrepresented. Right now my inspiration is coming primarily from the battles I have fought, the ones I am still fighting, and the people who are fighting those battles with me. I think I have accomplished a lot of stuff that I can be proud of, but nothing makes me more proud than this. Until the mental health conversation is being had in a way that appeals to all the people who suffering, we ain’t gonna see no change. That don’t work for me. So I’m gonna do it.

Sincerely: