This past July, a 24-year-old west Baltimore native and Edmondson High School graduate was crowned “Madame of Murderland,” after dominating a women-only freestyle battle hosted by WEAA’s Strictly Hip-Hop at the Black Door on West Lombard Street. The medium-framed, brown-skinned shorty with a neatly tapered close haircut and perfectly arched eyebrows commanded the battle with clever puns and sassy charisma. She moved the crowd with a performance of a prepared song that combined the confident tone of early MC Lyte with the fierce attitude of Rah Digga, as well as ruled the microphone in one-on-one battles. And, yes, she received a crown, sash, and jewelry like true royalty. Later this year, Ms. Stress plans to self-release her debut album, Surviving Life. It’s her first foray into studio recording, her skills cut primarily in battles and ciphers in Baltimore and New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta, Los Angeles and Richmond. “Yeah I’ve been battling dudes on Baltimore Street,” she says. “But I’ve also battled dudes on Eighth and Broadway [in New York]. I’ve battled dudes at the Hit Factory. I’ve battled dudes at Ruff Ryders Studio.” It’s all an effort to both learn what’s going on in other cities and start working her way out of her own ’hood. “People be like, ‘I’m hot on the streets,’” says the young woman born Tekia Johnson. “That’s good to be hot on the streets, but how many streets? Nowadays when dudes say they are hot on the streets, they are either hot on their block or hot in their city. I ain’t tryin’ to be hot on my block. I’m trying to be hot on everybody’s block, everybody’s neighbor, everybody’s living room.” On a sunny afternoon, Ms. Stress stops in at a downtown eatery with her manager Rio in tow, just a few hours before a scheduled studio session. The West Baltimore native explains that she started rhyming as a child. “My mother got me into the Twilight Program at the [Baltimore] School for the Arts,” she says. “I started doing spoken word there. I wanted to be the next Jada or ’Pac.” At about 12, she was given an assignment to write about her favorite poets for a language arts class at Booker T. Washington Middle School. “I was supposed to do an essay, but I wanted to flip it and do something like ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ but in my own way,” she says. “I wound up doing a poem called ‘Life,’ about what goes on in the streets, but I was scared to recite it and I did it too fast.” She laughs at the memory now. “Life” was Johnson’s first flirtation with rhyming to a beat. While she rehearsed the essay-poem, her family pounded out some inspiration for her to follow along. “I let my cousins and my uncles hear it, and they started banging beats on the table,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Hey, this sounds like a rhyme. Let me see what else I can come up with.’ And I took it from there.’” From then on, Johnson