"Honoring the voice of my imagination”
-F a r r a h B o u l é
Born and reared in Miami, during her formative years, Farrah’s earliest musical influences were the sounds of her native Haitian and Cuban heritage. As a preadolescent she relocated with her family to New York City where she found herself having to navigate unprecedented challenges amid certain harsh new realities of life. Finding herself suddenly thrust into and ultimately raised within the foster care system in a cold and unfamiliar city, she regularly navigated between silence and survival.
It was at this time on a fateful day, that she heard Digable Planets’ song Cool Like That blaring from a car stereo. Farrah chased after the car for blocks transfixed by the soundscape she was experiencing, thus inspiring what would be her life’s work. Launching her career under her birth name, Farrah Burns, by age 16 she was signed to Wu Enterprise, first as a solo artist then as part of a super group of female lyricists entitled The Five Deadly Venoms.
By the time she turned 19 Farrah signed as a solo artist to a new Miami based label, EKG Records where she released her popular single, Never Look For Love In The Club. By the early 2000s, Farrah returned to New York where she would become a featured artist of the Def Poetry Jam tour and appear in multiple radio ad campaigns for the brand. Farrah continued to stay busy collaborating with the iconic Lyricists Lounge to share stages with the likes of Mobb Deep and Wu Tang Clan among others. It was at one of these shows that the celebrated founder of hip hop culture, the legendary Kool Herc approached Farrah after her performance and declared to her, “You are the one”.
Farrah would continue to win the top prize at multiple prominent talent competitions where her awards were presented directly to her by such hip hop legends as Roxanne Shante and DJ Kool Red Alert. As a special guest featured artist, she recorded popular singles, trading verses with the likes of AZ and M-1 of Dead Prez. By 2008 Farrah released her first full length album, the seminal underground classic Oval Metal which won the Best Album category at that year’s Underground Music Awards.
By 2012 Farrah had artistically begun to expand beyond the boundaries of traditional pure hip hop as her calling led her to transcend the genre and evolve her sound. To respectfully say farewell and honor her foundation, Farrah created The 7th Element, a now iconic piece of work where she flawlessly weaves between seven drastically different personas of fictional female Emcee characters, who deliver seven different styles of highly skillful rhyme over the classic Nas track New York State of Mind. The fascinating music video for the single drew international acclaim as adoring feedback for it poured in from all corners of the globe.
By 2016 Farrah had fully grown into the next phase of her artistic identity and thus decided to change her professional name to Farrah Boulé in a nod to her Haitian heritage and culture. In French Creole the word Boulé means “Fire”. Now fully immersed in her new creative space and completely defying categorization as an artist, Farrah also created her own musical eco system of healing arts named Tribal Hop. Tribal Hop represents the spiritual side of hip hop and is a diverse and eclectic soundscape that allows her to “hop” between different forms of musical expression in an effort to transform humanity to a greater sense of wholeness and unite the “tribe” around a collective high vibrational frequency among all who experience her magic.
Farrah first launched Tribal Hop at the world renowned NYC based party Soul In The Horn on March 11, 2016 with a stunning performance in collaboration with internationally known DJ Natasha Diggs. Since then she has introduced Tribal Hop to audiences from around the world through high energy, sold out, headlining performances at a variety of spaces including the iconic Apollo Theatre, Minton’s Playhouse, Norwood and multiple appearances at the Sankofa Music Festival where she topped the bill. Farrah is frequently invited as a special guest at some of NYC’s most famous live music venues including Dumbo House, Blue Note, City Winery and NuBlu where she has shared the stage with the likes of Slum Village, Brand Nubian, CL Smooth, Robert Glasper and Dave Chappelle to name a few.
Farrah’s miraculous journey has seen her rise from the cracks of displacement to become a cultural visionary whose mission is nothing short of revolutionary: to heal the world through rhythm, ritual, and rhyme. In addition to music, she is a certified Reiki practitioner, Sound Therapist, Hypnotherapist, an ordained Minister and is currently studying the healing properties of magnet therapy. Farrah Boulè continues to record and perform in an effort to spread the healing and uplifting vibrations of Tribal Hop around the world.