South Florida has come to represent a decadent strain of underground rap. But, instead of focusing on the venomous rule, attention will be paid to the humble exception. So close yet so far from the glamour of Miami, Anna Sophia emerged from small town Cooper City under the name Lilith is Gone.
The 23-year-old vocalist describes her hometown as encompassing “lots of horses, real tropical air, and absolutely zero people who I associate with.” In an evening call with Underground Underdogs from the clarity of Pacific Time, Anna Sophia is as quick to acknowledge her enigma status as she is her past haunts. “There’s no text on the internet of someone having a conversation with me,” she says as she addresses the prospect of placing words on record. “Usually it’s just me saying hi to a few people sometimes if I go on Instagram live and they’ll be like ‘oh my god, this is so rare.’”
Despite her shadowy media presence, Anna Sophia has managed to rack up almost 60,000 Soundcloud plays on her cult hit “Bury You” (Prod. Foliage) through organic means. While taking a hiatus just two years after a project’s inception would have been the death of many artists, Lilith is Gone’s brief departure in 2018 only seemed to heighten the venture’s rare gem status. This image is one that has been nurtured without the conscious application of identity-obscuring cloaks.
Despite being raised on the alter ego-obsessed genre of black metal, Anna Sophia describes how, “there’s not a big difference between Lilith and me every day when I wake up in my room, and that’s how I’ve always wanted it to be; I didn’t want to have to hide parts of my life with the concern that it may be disrupting the image I have to portray.”
Even before Anna Sophia became synonymous with Lilith, the roots of staying true to herself were deeply laid. Living life far from the pretenses of an early e-girl, Anna Sophia spent high school keeping System of a Down, Cannibal Corpse, and “a lot of disgusting black metal” on replay as her classmates dove heavily into the more modern likes of the Black Dahlia Murder. Nevertheless, she found the population of her hometown to be the ones who were self-limiting by bending to suburban comforts. Anna Sophia had limited access to technological resources in her youth, which consequently became a bummer when Lil Tracy professed that he “can’t fuck with you if we weren’t friends on MySpace.” Fortunately, with patience, she eventually came to use networks like Tumblr and Twitter to make connections worth keeping.
Tumblr buddy-turned-real life link Thats Creep proved to be an important catalyst for carving out the creative outlet for which Anna Sophia longed. She recalls his encouraging words: “‘I know you can sing because you have a nice talking voice; just try.’” At first, she didn’t know why he was saying this. Hunched over her bed in front of her Blackberry, she had recorded her first track alone in 2012, but she had yet to conquer what she continually refers to as “self-limiting beliefs.” In a case of poor confidence with only minor stylistic motivations at play, Anna Sophia had adopted a monotone, spoken word-like style that was a far cry from the blissfully smooth vocals that are enjoyed by Lilith is Gone fans today. As most artists can probably relate, she reportedly “hated” her songs, “but it felt really good to make them.” The inextricable link between Lilith and Anna Sophia was ultimately melded through strong co-signs achieved through raw talent and great promise, but not without an underlying love for her cathartic canvass.
As Anna Sophia quite literally breathed more life into a place to put her struggles with depression and anxiety, Lilith is Gone’s sound began to solidify. While early manifestations of the project largely embraced uncut acoustic instrumentals, entrance into the blossoming world of highly emotive beats shifted Lilith is Gone’s trajectory. Hanging with Thats Creep and his boys involved the absorption of Bones and Lil Ugly Mane, and her own mom even sent her the link to “HeartagramAdios” (Prod. Jayyeah) thanks to her affinity for reading Noisey. Through some exploring on her own, Anna Sophia explains how she came to set her heart on the work of producer Ginseng: “I found his instrumentals on his SoundCloud and I was like ‘Hey man, can I write to this?’ Actually, I had said that I had already written to it. He was like ‘Yeah, go, for it; you have like three followers’ [laughs].” This white lie ultimately ignited a hot flame. Right before the release of “Bury You,” she received a collaboration offer from Pearl White, which prompted a response of “my life is made, like, I fucking made it.” Lilith was now being heard loud and clear.
Despite achieving these milestones — including the release of 2016’s I Should Have Told You EP and countless other tracks — life outside of music wasn’t letting up. Anna Sophia defines this concurrent time period by “a crazy undercut, like basically the whole bottom half of my head.” She was holding it down as the manager of a sunglass store at the mall, but, as she goes on to emphasize, “I was not okay.” Lilith is Gone was providing emotional release by juxtaposing delicate aesthetics with heavy themes, but the writing process also required her to face the demons whom she had never consciously acknowledged. Feeling suicidal had been previously interpreted as “just part of being a human being.” Outside of work, isolation was used as an instrument of control. Anna Sophia ultimately confronted her waning spirit by breaking out of her depressive echo chamber in an exceptional way – flying to Montreal to visit another longtime internet friend and collaborator, Foliage.
Defying a cliché pilgrimage to Los Angeles, Anna Sophia found salvation in the hub of young artists Montreal has to offer, as well as just human company more broadly. She recalls how upon meeting Foliage, he admitted that when he received pieces of “Bury You” and “Hollow” (what she refers to as her “second-best song”), all he could think was “‘Oh fuck, is she okay?’” Yet, over the course of her time abroad, her energy became recharged by breaking loose from her family’s household in Florida in which she was constantly referred to as “intense.” Anna Sophia quickly came to find that she was in a place where artists can do what they want while practicing mutual respect; a place where she could “step outside without being the weird black metal chick who goes to Publix.” She left with the clarity that nothing was holding her back from exploring Montreal again, or any other city for that matter. Equally important was the realization that assuming everyone was in agony was no more an unhealthy coping mechanism. Or, as she concisely put it: “being a human being is nuts, but it’s also not.”
A few days before her 22nd birthday, Anna Sophia was called back to Montreal – a place that still leaves her “washed in inspiration on a deep cellular level.” Lilith is Gone’s online network had grown to incorporate more members of the city’s DIY experimental hip hop scene. She Ubered straight from the airport to the doorstep of collective XXI just six days after they had implored her to come, which prompted the memorable reaction “Holy fuck, it’s this girl.” After days of immersion, the next natural step became clear: ordaining Lilith as a member of the collectif multidisciplinaire. “If was much more than just ‘you’re in the group chat now,’” Anna Sophia explains. It was a visceral bond that she permanently etched in her bio, as well as her skin. Of course, the trip would not have been complete without XXI tattooed on her wrist, opposite from where Lilith had already been inscribed.
After performing with XXI in what was effectively her first show, Anna Sophia faced the disarray waiting back home. It was not long before her inner drives for creativity and survival started to butt heads. Fellow musician Shae Delea and she were conspiring to move far, far away, but people, places, and things were blocking the road at every turn. Anna Sophia marks this time as the beginning of her hiatus and found it “wild that people pay so much attention to my presence” once fans noticed that Lilith had gone the way of her name. The only track recorded during this time, “48 Days” (Feat. Shae Delea), took a monumental effort, and served as “a big reminder that if I’m not creating music, I’m not okay.” While moving out of state with Shae proved to be out of the question, Anna Sophia began getting “excited for girl vibes” as she fled her hometown for Jacksonville to live with an old girlfriend from high school. Unfortunately, the home the women shared had a mold problem, which spurred bouts of wheezing that could not be ignored – a fate worse than death for a vocalist.
Anna Sophia had left her hometown with everything in her car, and even with no place to go, she did not see going back as an option. She drove to a Motel 6 in Tallahassee to regroup. Having had escapist dreams of the West on the backburner for some time, she relinked with Shae and decided to reap the benefits of his social networks in his home city of Las Vegas. From the moment the pair made it over the Florida line, Anna Sophia felt an instant boost. “For the first time in my life, I was facilitating everything,” she explains. “I would decide what would happen in the next hour.” This freedom was a significant departure from her life back home in which she, and ultimately, Lilith, had to take a back seat to the demands of others. The motivation to make a new life work withstood the test of 115-degree heat and a string of sketchy motels. It may have taken two new retail jobs, and selling a MacBook Pro, but Shae and her established a home of their own.
As the dust has settled on her desert life, Anna Sophia identities a significant sense of relief, particularly in terms of being back from hiatus. “It’s a reminder that I can do this,” she declares, acknowledging her ongoing battle with self-doubt. Reflecting on her journey to breaking out, she cites the importance of SoundCloud without taking a stance on scene politics. “People who have blown up and have a lot of recognition now deserve it,” she professes. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff. I’m just grateful that it exists.” So far, she has spent 2019 releasing her latest tear-jerking track “Exalted” (Prod. Foliage) while cultivating a one-of-a-kind merch line. The vocalist has gotten back in the saddle so smoothly that it’s difficult to fathom that she has ridden such a long journey. Then again, perhaps Lilith was never really gone when she’s at the core of Anna Sophia; not just as an artist, but as a human being.