Austin Rapper Mama Duke Debuts on America's Got Talent

Austin-based recording artist and songwriter Mama Duke, also known as Kori Roy, will be appearing on episode four of America’s Got Talent Season 20 Tuesday. The appearance, featuring Roy's audition for the competition show, follows the release of her new pop album, “You Can Open Your Eyes Now,” on January 30. The release is a follow up to her 2021 rap debut, “Ballsy.”

Roy, who is an out-and-proud lesbian, has been a local hip-hop mainstay since she founded the ATX Social Club, an online group connecting genre-lovers and performers in 2019. Since then, she was an official South by Southwest Music Festival artist in 2021 and graced the Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup in 2022. Most recently, Roy appeared in her own TEDx Talk, where she spoke about authenticity in performance on June 5.

Roy grew up in Palacios, Texas. She was one of the first people in her small-town high school to come out of the closet in 2003. Her mom was a big supporter in her journey, embracing the “Black, queer, masculine-presenting woman,” as Roy describes herself.

“If I can do this with all these things stacked against me, that’s one big leap for Austin artists — the underground, the unknowns, the hidden gems,” Roy told the Statesman on Monday. “We don’t get these moments all the time. There are times when the phone don’t ring and nobody’s in your emails. We dream about stuff like this and they call us crazy, but then it happens.”

The experience was unnerving.

“There’s nothing you can do to prepare to sit in front of Simon Cowell,” Roy said. “Sometimes us artists have to step into our higher selves. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I blacked out a little bit. No matter how far I’ve come from stage fright, there’s nothing in this world like something that could live on the internet forever. It is the most nerve-wracking thing in the world.”

'Everybody's blueprint looks different'

After high school, Roy was going to enlist in the Army before her mom convinced her to live in Houston with an uncle instead. She enrolled in photography classes at the Art Institute, before embracing music as her real passion and moving to Austin to pursue rap.

She lingered on the outskirts of open mic nights for two years due to crippling stage fright. She would get nauseated even thinking about going on stage. Nevertheless, she overcame that hurdle, and by her third gig, Mama Duke was opening for Naughty by Nature at Empire Garage.

Roy has since championed other female and queer-identifying people looking to make a name for themselves in rap. This America’s Got Talent audition is exactly what the two-time Austin Hip-Hop Award winner and her fans have been waiting for. She said all the things that used to hold her back now make her stand out and are catapulting her career.

“To people that know they have something special, who are just trying to get to their next thing, everybody’s blueprint looks different,” Roy said. “Your blueprint looks different from mine, so you’ve got to carve your own space in this city. You bring something to the table that I could never bring, so bring that! I just want people to know that they are cool enough and good enough. We need it all.”

Can’t get enough of Mama Duke? Roy is also releasing an ebook later this month, full of everything she wished she knew when starting out in music, “from gear to gigs to getting out of your own head.”

“I wanted to gift folks like me an artist handbook—mainly cause I wish I was given one when I was trying to figure all this music (expletive) out,” Roy said in a May 31 Instagram post. “It’s for people who have the tools but don’t know how to use them all. The people that know they’ve got something special, but just need a little guidance either getting started or tapping into the next level of their artistry.”

Catch Mama Duke’s national television debut this Tuesday on NBC and locally on KXAN (Channel 36) at 7 p.m. CST.