Ravinia 2026 Issue 4

Divinity Roxx at Ravinia’s Carousel Stage in 2024 “ I WROTE MY FIRST RAP WHEN I WAS 12, ABOUT YOUNG GIRLS RESPECTING THEIR BODIES. ” Her artistic journey began in Atlanta. Her uncle played saxophone in a funk band. She used to sit raptly on the steps of her grandmother’s basement and lis- ten to the band practice. “I always found it interesting that nobody thought to give me an instrument,” she says. “I was clearly so into what they were doing.” Meanwhile, her mother was an avid radio listener and had ample record and tape collections. “Music was always playing,” Roxx says. “In our household, during family gatherings, or in the car; all the old school bands—R&B, hip-hop, funk. My curious self would always go and shu e through all that stu to try to see what I could nd. It was a treasure trove.” She also studied album jackets. “Whitney Houston, Lisa Stans eld, Ma- donna, Michael Jackson—oh my God, O the Wall —I would stare into the eyes of these artists and try to imagine what they were like in real life. I wanted to look into their souls,” she says. V was her radio station. It was the R&B station and was the rst in the area to play hip-hop. “But they would only play it late at night,” she says with a laugh. “I discovered this on weekends. But I couldn’t say up late enough to continue to listen, so I would put a tape in my player and record the DJ’s playlist, I would transcribe all the raps because to learn them, you had to write them down.” [ e branding of Atlanta’s WVEE . would pollinate in markets like Baltimore and Chicago later in the ’ s and ’ s as stations adopted similar programming.] One profound early in uence was MC Lyte. Hers was one of the rst al- bums Roxx remembers buying. “On the radio, you only heard guys rapping,” she says. “When I rst heard her, I was like, ‘Oh my God, girls can do this too.’ ” And so, she did. “Hip-hop music changed my life because you could tell stories with a beat and rhyme,” she says. “I wrote my rst rap when I was . It was called ‘Respect,’ ” I don’t remember any of the words, but I do remember it was about young girls respecting their bodies.” In middle school, Roxx played the clarinet (she was rst chair in the school band). And while she was intrigued with her uncle’s sax, he tried to get her to play the bass. “I never liked it,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t know what to do with it. I would beg him to let me play his saxo- phone. I give him credit for planting the seed in my mind. It just took a long time.” e roots nally took when she was in her s. Roxx was attending UC Berkeley to study journalism. Being a rapper and musician wasn’t her career path, she says. “My parents sacri ced so much for us to RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUGUST 17 – AUGUST 23 , 2026 14 KYLE DUNLEAVY / RAVINIA