Indie rap success is a science. Luckily, Psalm One is a chemist

“My first name was Psalm 65:11, which talks about God's bounty for the year. I was like, I've got a bounty of raps,” she said, cringing. “But people weren't getting the verse right, so I did Psalm One, which was a nod to graffiti writers, saying ‘I'm the first.’ Psalm 1 is about not dwelling in the company of the unrighteous. As I've gotten older, Psalm One seems a lot more apropos because, yeah, I don't want to be around dirty souls. Smite them all!”

Cristalle Bowen is the 46-year-old author, educator and veteran rapper behind Psalm One. Bowen is best known for her superlative roles in the Chitown rap ensemble Nacrobats as well as her first major label, Rhymesayers. In the intervening years, she’s released over two dozen projects and participated in other rap groups like The Rapperchicks and BIG $ILKY, participating in both with her partner, singer Angel Davanport.

Bowen has spent over half her life inhabiting the role of Psalm One while traversing the Mad Lib that is her musical journey. She was there for the rise and fall of the blog era and has shared the stage with many of the biggest names in hip-hop, including Tyler, The Creator, MF Doom, DMX, Slick Rick, Travis Scott, De La Soul and the Wu-Tang Clan.

“I do love the randomness of an independent musician's career. You find yourself in the strangest places, the weirdest spots,” said Bowen, who toured with Insane Clown Posse in 2017. “If you’re really DIY about it, and you're really ‘getting it out the mud,’ as they say, you will find yourself in some cool and interesting places.”

But perhaps the most impressive feat on Psalm One’s long list of hip-hop accomplishments — far above her vanquishing of a young Chancellor The Rapper in a citywide jingle contest — is simply maintaining.

Keeping an independent rap career going for over a quarter century is a science. Luckily, Bowen used to be a chemist.

Without Bowen, there’d be no McGriddle

To fulfill her dream of living as an independent artist, Bowen was willing to grind. Over the years, she’s worked as a precalculus tutor, a soccer coach, a rideshare driver, an afterschool music mentor, a snack vendor at the zoo and whatever else she needed to do to pay the rent and studio bills.

After graduating with a degree in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Bowen landed a lab job testing products as a food safety scientist. She worked there for several years, spending her time examining the salt and fat contents of fast foods before they hit the market.

One of her most high-profile projects was the greenlighting of one of the century’s most significant, syruppy sandwiches.

“I'm the reason that [the McGriddle] got through the FDA testing,” said Bowen. “We tested those. It was a weird thing. They were like, ‘They got the syrup in the McMuffin!’ We were all huddled around it, like, ‘Whoa, that's cool.’”

Even though she got to work with sweet treats, Bowen didn’t exactly savor her laboratory gig. Any notion that the job would be like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory was dashed at first sniff.

“You could get fired for eating the samples. There's some labs where you can partake. Our lab made it a point to get expired stuff to discourage folks from doing it," said Bowen, haunted by the smell of putrid meat. "I remember when I first started working there, one of the staff guys — I think he might have been on the janitorial staff — got fired for eating some Twix or something — some candy bar that we were testing. And they got rid of them.”

If that’s how her employer reacted to a nibble, she thought, they might not take too kindly to finding out about her closet rap career. So, she kept Psalm One under her labcoat as long as she could, though her cover was eventually blown. The unmasking ostracized her among her colleagues, and Bowen didn’t stick around for long after that.

Bio:Chemistry and joining Nacrobats

Bowen had a pretty cloistered childhood. She says her mom was determined to keep her daughter and “shenanigans” separated at all costs. Despite her mother’s best efforts, Bowen discovered an unshakable love of hip-hop in her teenage years, partly inspired by the local rap mega-crew, Nacrobats. Whenever she could get away, teenage Bowen would sneak off with the neighborhood kids to watch artists like Chips Pentium and Nacrobats founder Pugslee “Pugs” Atomz hold court.

In her junior year of college, Bowen released her debut album as Psalm One, Bio:Chemistry, which blended her golden era flow with scientific precision. That project reasserted her role in the Chicago scene, and Pugs extended her a formal invitation to join Nacrobats. Psalm One is featured on the final song on Nacrobats’ album A In The Square, and appears on seven tracks across 2003’s All Ways. She credits Pugs with helping reintegrate her into the scene after four years away at college.

Around 2002, Bowen moved back to Englewood with her mother. She was in an awkward living situation: scrounging together money from working concerts and hocking her Bio:Chemistry CDs, while hiding it all from an overprotective parent.

One day, Bowen asked her mom to borrow a few dollars to drive into the city for a concert. When she returned that evening to reimburse her mom, the undercover rapper was accused of sex work.

“My mom gave me like five bucks for gas, because back then five bucks could actually do something in a gas tank,” said Bowen. “And then I came back with all this money because I got paid for the show. The show was packed, we got paid off the door. And I took that wad of cash out, started peeling off [to pay her back]. My mom was like, ‘What you been out there doing!?’ Rapping a show would probably be the furthest thing from her mind.”

In an effort to set the record straight, Bowen pulled up a recent review of Bio:Chemistry from the once influential, now-defunct blog era site, hiphopinfinity.com. While the article did get her mom off her back, it was not the rave review Bowen dreamed it would be.

“That one was actually my first disappointment,” said Bowen. “I got misgendered in my review, which clouded the whole review because the reviewer kept saying ‘he, he.’ It was like, ‘This dude is rapping about this,’ or ‘This dude kind of has a high voice at times.’ II'm like, ‘I'm not a dude!’ I know I have a lower tone and a rasp, but I’m not a dude. I wanted to be on Hiphop Infinity so bad. I was like, ‘Yo, if they review my sh*t, that's it. Like, mama I made it!’ And then I got reviewed ... I got a low score and got misgendered.”

Bowen’s 2024 memoir, Her Word Is Bond: Navigating Hip Hop and Relationships in a Culture of Misogyny, details many of the obstacles that befall women traversing the male-dominated industry, including her own challenges with bad deals, financial instability and domestic violence.

Opening for 50 Cent, MF Doom and his Doomposters

Around January of 2003, as 50 Cent’s single “In Da Club” was tearing through the nation, Psalm One was given the opportunity to open for the bulletproof vest-wearing Queens upstart in Chicago. Bowen was thankful for the opportunity, but today is more grateful that she escaped with her life.

“It was at a club called E2 which, maybe a month later had a crazy fire and a stampede and a disaster,” said Bowen, referring to the horrific Feb. 17, 2003 stampede that killed 21 concertgoers and injured more than 50 others. “It was messed up; people died. I could understand why because there was only one entrance and exit for everyone, and they would pack the place. It was a fire hazard all the time.”

Besides the structural dangers presented by E2, Bowen was also wary of the crowd in general. The buzz around the Eminem-cosigned artist brought out some real roughnecks. She realized that night that the ‘G’ in G-Unit didn’t just stand for ‘Guerilla.’

“It was super gangsta,” said Bowen. “It was so many would-be gangsters and probably real gangsters. I think 50 Cent had only come out with like two singles, ’In Da Club’ and ‘Wanksta.’ I think ‘In Da Club’ had maybe just came out, but it hadn't blew yet. We opened and then I saw the first couple songs from 50 and I left because it was getting so packed. It took so long to get down this one stairwell, and it was just super dangerous.”

While not a threat to her physical wellbeing, Bowen risked reputational disaster at another infamous Chicago show, this time at The Congress. And she wasn’t even on the bill.

The day before Valentine’s Day 2010, Psalm One was where all the hip-hop heads were: backstage at the Mos Def and MF Doom show. Grumbles turned to heckles as the hours ticked by and neither indie rap luminary could be found. Bowen says that even local “beloved scene rappers” were getting booed by an increasingly “rowdy and irate” Chitown crowd.

“One of the homies, the promoters, was like, ‘Hey, we'll pay you $100 to go out and do a couple songs.’ I was like, ‘Hell no! I'm not going out there.’ Maybe 15 minutes passed. He came back and he's like, ‘Alright, $200 for two songs.’ I said, ‘Run it, let's do it.’ And [the audience] kind of chilled out for me. I was not booed. But as soon as I walked off stage after the second song they started booing, like ‘Where's Doom at!?’ That was the nicest, I think, that they could be at that moment.”

The audience at The Congress that night never actually found out where Doom was at. Rather, the artist formerly known as Mos Def, wearing Doom’s iconic mask, popped up and performed. It was one of dozens of examples of “Doomposters” taking the stage in the masked rap figure’s stead.

Fortunately, Bowen did get to perform at shows with the actual Doom, as well as more of his Doomposters, and believes the whole operation was “all f*cking orchestrated.”

“I've seen a Doomposter where Doom was there. Like, he's backstage, but then still sent the imposter out. That's the kind of crazy sh*t that he would do.”

Keeping up with Cristalle

Psalm One visited Iowa on Saturday, June 20, for Iowa City Pride as the event’s official Aftershow performer at The Englert. With melodic assistance from partner Davanport, Bowen performed mostly songs from the latter half of her catalogue, including music from her new collab album with producer Optiks, titled Is This A Safe Space?.

Bowen continues to produce music in Chicago, where she also conducts interviews and discovers new music as a host at Audiotree.

"It's been fun getting to know a lot of great music that I might not have otherwise," said Bowen. "My framework and my wheelhouse is hip-hop, and a lot of my studies have been soul, R&B and hip-hop. And then like rock and jazz and funk and other things. That's really opened my palate up to a lot more emo, metal — stuff that I might have heard along my travels, but not really like studied up on too much."