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The love story at the heart of local rap luminary Karma Rivera’s debut album, Priceless, is low-key a queer epic—a rise and fall, an odyssey, a saga of love, loss, animus, and reclamation; a journey to the center of Lesbos. Am I being hyperbolic? Maybe. Do we need more queer rap epics? Definitely. Can we rely on Karma Rivera to drop them? Absolutely.
“If I’m feeling some way, I’m going to write about it,” says the local rap luminary. “If it’s catchy enough, it might become a song.”
Priceless, which drops Nov. 1 with a same-night release show at Nova PDX, is at its core an uncomplicated half hour of sing-song alt-rap bars over a contemporary blend of hyperpop island beats, rhythmic bedroom jams, and straightforward club bangers. It’s a simple structure held together with a relatably openhearted story arc, deftly delivered by Rivera with sensual, sweet-and-sour lyricism. She met a girl, they fell in love, the love turned sour, and through push and pull she reclaimed her time. We love to see it—but it hits especially deliciously when it deviates from heteronormativity so fiercely as to transcend it altogether.
Which is to say, it wasn’t until the second listen that I realized Rivera was singing about queer love. The album is such a vibe that all the context is easily folded into the production, a sum not necessarily greater than its parts, but certainly hypnotic enough that my first instinct as a listener was to toe-tap, head-nod and booty-shake rather than immediately investigate the language.
There’s a coarse sweetness to Rivera’s vocals. Her lyrical delivery has a delicate grit, but when she dissolves into song, her timbre becomes low-key reminiscent of a Disney pop princess—not to downplay Rivera’s ability, but to note her breathy but capable pipes. Whether delivering guitar-plucking singer-songwriter energy, as on the acoustic remix of “We Gotta Thing” with Lana Shea, or bodying the teasing tone and anthemic chorus of “You So Nasty,” her manner maintains sensuality, personability, and silky intensity that feels both specific to Rivera yet applicable to a generation of proud and prominent queer artists in pop culture.
The album’s titular song is also its first. “Priceless” introduces Rivera via a discordant minor-key hook before her storytelling rap style unfurls into what feels like a Hero’s Journey’s worth of emotional romantic lore. “I would spend it all, but you priceless / You a bad girl and I’m the nicest / Love, we should get together, no devices / I wrote this song for you, I hope you like this, love,” sings Rivera as her story of woo coalesces. Five songs later, on “Like U Did Me,” Rivera purrs, “When you call, I’m busy / I know that makes you dizzy / Let’s be honest, really / Are u gon’ get back with me?”
Such is the flow of Priceless: an invitation to groove through the highs of infatuation, the intoxicating intimacy of new love, the grasping feelings of loss and the swoon of self-actualization. In this case, the actualization is that Rivera is maybe a player—or maybe she just crushes a lot. Either way, the vibe is strongly sex-positive.
“I find inspiration really from my own personal experiences,” Rivera says. “My relationships, my life journey, my day-to-day, and what I’m going through or feeling at the moment.”
Rivera was born in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park in 1990, and partially raised in the Pacific Northwest. Over the past decade, she’s become a mainstay of Portland’s ever-changing hip-hop landscape, synthesizing identity and musicianship to bring notoriety to one of Portland’s most maligned genres. While Priceless is Rivera’s debut album, she is by no means a newcomer—she landed on WW’s Best New Bands list in 2019, was part of the creative crew earlier this year that helped unveil Portland International Airport’s new wood roof, and over the summer was honored with a Trailblazer Award at the 2025 PDX Star Awards during the annual Hip-Hop Week festivities.
In production, Rivera leans heavily on her Boricua heritage, with undeniably Latin and island influences coming through on every track. “I pick out the sounds, but my engineer handles the arrangement, the mixing, and sometimes the mastering,” Rivera says of her fully independent releases. “I’ve been working with the same engineer, Hendrick Varela of Colombia, since 2018. I focus on the songwriting, vocal production, and creative direction.”
The end product is a lovergirl debut that plays with genre, gender, sexuality, and unapologetic authenticity. Priceless is implicitly queer and made to gas up the communities that claim Rivera, but her craft possesses the cross-cultural appeal money can’t buy.
SEE IT: Karma Rivera at Nova PDX, 722 E Burnside St, novapdxevents.com. 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 1. $10. 21+.
