Noname announces a 16-date US summer tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of her debut mixtape Telefone. Tickets on sale June 12
Ten years after Telefone quietly reshaped what a debut rap project could sound like, Noname is taking it back on the road. On June 11, the Chicago rapper and poet Fatimah Warner announced a 16-stop US summer tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of her acclaimed debut mixtape, kicking off August 2 in Toronto and closing September 10 at Park West in her hometown of Chicago. An artist presale using code TELEFONE is currently live, with general on-sale beginning Friday, June 12 at 10 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster.
Telefone was released July 31, 2016 as a free download on Bandcamp, after four years of production delays and one announcement that the project no longer existed. It arrived anyway, 10 tracks in 33 minutes, built from jazz rap, neo-soul, and conscious hip-hop, and produced primarily by Cam O’bi, Phoelix, Saba, and Monte Booker.
The Metacritic score sits at 84 based on universal critical acclaim, with Pitchfork ranking opening track “Yesterday” the 37th best track of 2016. Its guest list, which included Saba, Smino, Ravyn Lenae, Eryn Allen Kane, and Raury among others, reads today like a who’s who of what Chicago’s creative underground became. That list was assembled not through networking but through community, something Noname addressed directly in the statement accompanying the tour announcement.
Noname’s Statement and the Community Behind the Tape
“I hope 10 years ago in some small corner of the world you heard the imagination of young folks from the city of Chicago,” Noname wrote in the statement. “Telefone was already breathing when I discovered it. It sat, quietly whispering to me between every blunt rotation outside YOUmedia, after every conversation with Cam about the texture of sound, after I lived along enough to sing about it. Telefone was raised by a community.“
She closed the statement with a full accounting of everyone who built the record with her. “Thank you everyone who contributed to this little world of mine. Telefone is a place I hope many of us felt welcomed into. Cam, Saba, Ravyn Lenae, Joseph Chilliams, Phoelix, Smino, Monte Booker, Akenya, Raury, Xavier Omar, The MIND, Brian Sanborn, Luke Titus, Eryn Allen Kane, Nikko Washington, Elton (and Chance for allowing me to record during his personal sessions when I was broke). I LOVE YOU ALL DEEPLY.”
That last parenthetical, about Chance the Rapper letting her record during his personal sessions when she was broke, is a detail that lands differently a decade on. Noname first gained wider recognition through her feature on Chance’s Acid Rap in 2013, and Telefone represented the full arrival that Acid Rap hinted at. The mixtape’s jazz-inflected production and Noname’s skipping, spoken-word-rooted cadence stood apart from everything else in rap in 2016 and have not dated a day since.
The Tour, the Book Club, and What Comes Next
The 16-stop run moves through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Houston, Austin, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, with the final date at Bumbershoot Festival on September 6 before the Chicago homecoming on September 10. The venues are deliberately intimate for an artist whose catalog has the critical weight to justify larger rooms. Sony Hall in New York, The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, and The Regency Ballroom in San Francisco are spaces where the density and precision of Telefone’s production will translate directly.
Noname’s most recent album, Sundial, was released in 2023 to significant critical attention, appearing on multiple year-end rap lists. An upcoming mixtape, Cartoon Radio, was announced in October 2025 alongside its lead single “Hundred Acres” but has yet to materialize. She continues to run the Noname Book Club, which currently operates meetings in more than 30 cities across Africa and the United States. The Telefone anniversary tour is the most visible public-facing move she has made in years, and for the Chicago community that raised that tape, it will mean something considerable.
Full Noname 2026 Tour Dates:
08/02 Toronto, ON @ The Opera House / 08/04 Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall / 08/05 New York, NY @ Sony Hall / 08/06 Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia / 08/08 Richmond, VA @ Maymont / 08/09 Washington, DC @ Howard Theatre / 08/11 Atlanta, GA @ The Loft / 08/14 Houston, TX @ House of Blues Houston / 08/15 Austin, TX @ Emo’s Austin / 08/16 Dallas, TX @ House of Blues Dallas / 08/18 Denver, CO @ Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom / 09/01 Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre / 09/02 San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom / 09/04 Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom / 09/06 Seattle, WA @ Bumbershoot Festival / 09/10 Chicago, IL @ Park West
