There’s a version of Philadelphia that prides itself on being a Black music city, and another version that struggles to own the spaces where that music lives. Neptune XXI named that gap out loud. While preparing for her solo show, she realized that despite the city’s global reputation, she couldn’t find a Black-owned, state-of-the-art performance venue to hold it. Instead of quietly working around that absence, she posted an Instagram video asking why the contradiction still exists and what it reveals about culture, ownership, and responsibility. It was framed as a practical question, one that asked what it means to participate in a culture without helping to shape its conditions.
That instinct to notice what’s missing and feel accountable for what comes next has shaped Neptune’s work long before this moment. Although she had been writing and performing before, Baltimore is where she fully stepped into her calling as a spoken-word artist while teaching in Baltimore City schools. Responsibility to audience was not optional. “My students liked poetry,” she said, “but they really listened to music.” The shift from poems to songs wasn’t about reach or genre. It was about care. She wanted to make work her students could hear themselves inside of, work that could exist around their parents, grandparents, and communities. Immersed in activism and organizing, Baltimore became the place where that responsibility deepened into conviction. “Baltimore made me an artist,” she said. “That’s where I became Neptune XXI.”
When she came to Philadelphia to continue developing her work, that ethic remained central. She understood that presence in a city like this required participation. “I felt like I had to add something in order to create space for myself,” she said. Neptune began creating opportunities by curating events and initiating collaborations, bringing people together in the process. During that period, she found herself in conversation with people who were already building Philadelphia’s creative infrastructure, including Will Toms, founder of REC Philly, who challenged her to think more expansively about artistic ownership and long-term strategy, and Rae Dianz, whose deep relationships across the city reflect what sustained, behind-the-scenes stewardship actually looks like. Those exchanges didn’t offer shortcuts. They offered models for how artists can move with intention inside a scene they want to help grow.
That same orientation eventually extended beyond her own music. Nu Indigo Nation emerged from Neptune’s belief that artists should build containers, not spotlights. What began as a vision for collective cultural power has grown into a nonprofit rooted in community care, education, and shared stewardship. “If I see a problem, I don’t like to keep talking about it,” she said. “What’s the solution?” Rather than centering herself, Neptune helped shape a structure where artists, organizers, and world-builders can move together, aligned by values rather than visibility and committed to something larger than individual momentum.
When the Medicine Music Experience Part II took place at Kanvas on February 21st, it wasn’t just a performance. It was a demonstration of that ethic in motion. The music, the partnerships, and the infrastructure all reflected the same through line that runs across her work. And she didn’t stop there. In response to the question that sparked the moment, Neptune has begun organizing what she calls the Spirit Circuit, an initiative inspired by the legacy of the Chitlin’ Circuit, designed to connect Black-owned spaces and create intentional pathways for artists. The show happened. The question widened. The work continues.