Jessica Holter's Coffy Box Music & Soundtracks
Sonic Legacy & Collaborators
Founded in 1995 by Jessica Holter, The Punany Poets emerged as a radical response to the AIDS crisis and a celebration of Black love, intimacy, and truth-telling. The group’s audio catalog blends spoken word, R&B, hip-hop, and theatrical scoring—often performed live and captured in studio sessions. ​

Enjoy music from our HIP Archives, and let us know if you would like a use license.

Coffy Box Music

“2 Cooks in the Kitchen” is a trap‑cabaret fusion that stirs gospel grit, street wit, and playful stagecraft into one unforgettable dish. Built on deep 808s, rolling hi‑hats, and sly bass walks, the song flips everyday kitchen chaos into a testimony of survival, rivalry, and resilience. Spoken word verses move preacher‑style, snapping over stripped‑down beats, while the chorus hits with fire: two cooks battling for the recipe, the spice, the spotlight.

This track is equal parts comedy and confession — a late‑night supper of burned biscuits, black salt, and pressure‑cooker passion. Horn punches, crowd stomps, and whispered asides turn the kitchen into a cabaret stage, where heat, hunger, and hustle collide.

Raw, urgent, and theatrical, “2 Cooks in the Kitchen” is more than a song — it’s a performance. If you can’t stand the heat… you already know.

2 Cooks in the Kitchen

“Boxes” is a spoken‑word rock‑trap fusion that confronts identity, foster care, and the politics of belonging. Opening with party chatter and whispered questions — What are you? Are you Black? Are you white? — the track unravels into a searing testimony about labels, stereotypes, and the trauma of being forced into categories that erase humanity.

Sparse guitar riffs and heavy beat drops frame verses delivered preacher‑style, exposing the cold machinery of foster care, the indignities of social workers, and the absurdity of “checking boxes” for donors and systems. The chorus rises as a defiant mantra: If you’ve just got to check a box, call me American.

Raw, urgent, and unflinching, “Boxes” is both performance and protest — a sonic warehouse of voices, trauma, and resilience. It blends humor, lament, and rage into a testimony of survival, challenging listeners to confront the ways society commodifies identity.

This is not just a song — it’s a reckoning. Funds generated with this song benefit Voices of Foster Care.

Boxes

“Bury This Book” is a toast to Jessica Holter’s Truth is a Trap House — a spoken‑word performance that fuses raw street cadence with ancestral lament. It’s a call to preserve memory, protect legacy, and resist erasure. Over sparse guitar notes, heavy beats, and preacher‑style delivery, Holter urges us to bury our stories, our artifacts, our truths — not to hide them, but to safeguard them for future generations.

The track moves between fiery declarations (“The Devil likes his meat raw!”) and tender instructions to plant memories deep in the earth. Each verse layers personal testimony with communal survival: family trees, unwritten songs, unworn dresses, recipes, and values — all treasures buried against the flames of history’s distortion.

The chorus becomes a ritual chant: Bury this. Bury this. Book. It’s both protest and prayer, a refusal to be boxed in or erased. By the bridge, the piece explodes into critique of fearmongers and systems that profit from lies, before returning to the mantra of resilience.

Raw, spiritual, and urgent, “Bury This Book” is more than a track — it’s an archive, a map, a survival kit. A testimony of survival and resistance, it reminds us: if history is a trap, then memory is our weapon.

Bury this Book

Bury This Book (demo)

Emcee Skawla is a triple threat — AIB‑Girl, rapper, and singer — who embodies the raw fusion of street energy, gospel fire, and house music euphoria. As the lead voice of Truth Is a Trap House, she delivers cadenced chants, spoken word sermons, and melodic hooks that move between rebellion and revelation. Her artistry is rooted in the cipher: breakdance battles, freestyle flows, and vocal performances that blur the line between testimony and theater.

Raised in the tradition of hip‑hop’s fearless women, Skawla flips the mic into a weapon of truth. Her B‑Girl foundation gives her rhythm a physicality — every verse lands like footwork, every chorus spins like a windmill. As a rapper, she spits with urgency, confronting deception, identity, and survival. As a singer, she channels gospel lament and house ecstasy, lifting the track into spiritual ascension.

In Truth Is a Trap House, Skawla becomes both griot and guide. She opens with the challenge — “So you want to be free? Free from what, free from who? You!” — and carries listeners through verses that expose illusions, choruses that demand accountability, and bridges that affirm faith, hope, charity, and gratitude. Her delivery is hypnotic, rebellious, and euphoric, weaving Chicago House grooves with trap grit inside a Southern Baptist church atmosphere.

Emcee Skawla is more than a performer; she is a movement. A voice that refuses silence, a dancer who turns rhythm into resistance, a singer who transforms lament into liberation. With Truth Is a Trap House, she proves that truth may be a trap, but music is the key — and she holds it.

Truth is a Trap House

Jessica Holter’s The Head Doctor is reimagined in Skin Flute, a sensual new track created for the Coffy Box Rom~Com show. Best known for founding The Punany Poets in 1995, Holter now steps into her role as poet‑turned‑songwriter, transforming her provocative and intimate verses into music. This track blends playful storytelling with lush, seductive soundscapes — a testament to her evolution from page to stage, and now into song.

Skin Flute

Dance Battle: Ruby vs. Reba is a crunk cipher staged as a showdown between archetypes of scandalous women. Set against pounding beats and audience applause, the track unfolds like a midnight revue where pearls clash with rhinestones, and every move is a gamble. A detective’s radio monologue frames the duel: “Two women, one spotlight. Pearls against rhinestones. Who plays the game… and who gets played?”

Verses weave through Hollywood’s scandalous past — from Pre‑Code sirens and burlesque queens to femme fatales and jungle dames — exposing how women bent the rules, complicated the ingénue, and redefined power on screen. The chorus drives home the theme: She’s playin’ the game, and the game plays you.

With spoken word interludes, historical references, and nods to icons like Josephine Baker and Tallulah Bankhead, the track fuses crunk battle energy with cinematic storytelling. It’s raw, playful, and subversive — a musical dance‑off that celebrates scandal, survival, and the art of breaking rules.

Complicating the Ingénue

Rage Almighty is a Boston native and current Dallas resident who has successfully mastered the craft of poetry, hosting and acting. He has made a reputable name for himself through travel and social media evident in the video for his poem “Depression” reaching over 100,000 views on YouTube for example. Some of his greatest accomplishments include being the opening act for hip hop artists Brand Nubian, T.I., and Dead Prez, soul singers Kindred the Family Soul, Chrisette Michelle, Urban Mystic and the Punany Poets as well as world renowned poets Saul Williams and Nikki Giovanni. Rage is the 2013 Dallas Grand Slam Champion, a 4x Dallas Slam Team member, Inkwell Slam Team member, and top 20 finalist at the 2012 Individual World Poetry Slam. His performance credits have earned him two 2014 North Texas Spoken Word Awards for Poet of the Year and Erotic Poet of the Year as well as 2014 National Poetry Award for Best Spoken Word Album “lust.sex.love&heartbrake.(in that exact order)”. Rage is also very much a social activist who focuses on helping young people to express themselves positively through art. Above that, one of his most shining achievement was appearing on national TV in Season 4 of Lexus’ Verses and Flow on TV One. When it comes to creativity, Rage is among one of the best utilizing satire to comment on social issues. He is one of a kind and a legend in the making.

Rage Almighty

i took a bit of drake and smashed it with the good ole favorite "Fever"

Fever

This is Part one. Enjoy <33 Anticipate Part 2 & The Full Video Very soon!!

Girl

Audio from The Punany Poets! Live at The Celebrity Theater  12.8.2012 Prayer from Jessica Holter and Poetry by The First Act in The Show. I'll have to figure out what her name was. Personally She was the best part of the show! Dope.

Jessica Holter - Punnany Poets Prayer And Opening Act

More Punany Poetry Sounds.. A Demonstration of how to put a condom on with your mouth ;-) This audio is more of sounds from the audience.

Sounds from Saturday night's Punany Poets!

Coffy Box Music — A Sonic Legacy of Truth & Communion

Coffy Box Music is the publishing arm of Holter Intellectual Property, Inc., a nonprofit founded by Jessica Holter to preserve and expand the cultural legacy of The Punany Poets. Since 1995, Holter’s groundbreaking work has fused spoken word, R&B, hip‑hop, gospel, and theatrical scoring into a living archive of Black love, intimacy, and truth‑telling.

From the HIP Archives to new collaborations, Coffy Box Music curates soundtracks that move between live performance and studio craft, blending radical testimony with soulful resonance. Our catalog features work with legendary producers and musicians including Lev Berlak (Too $hort, E‑40), D’Wayne Wiggins (Tony! Toni! Toné!), Femi Andrades, Keno Mapp, and sessions at The Grill Studios — each contributing to the sonic sanctuary of Holter’s poetic vision.

Today, Coffy Box Music expands into the future with Suno AI remixes and original productions for the forthcoming Truth Is a Trap House Listening Party Album. These new works remix Holter’s spoken word into genre‑bending tracks that carry the urgency of foster care testimony, gospel lament, and trap‑house grit into a modern soundscape.

We also offer custom songs for every occasion — birthdays, anniversaries, or “just because” moments — transforming your stories into one‑of‑a‑kind musical keepsakes. All music and entertainment curriculum is available through Holter Intellectual Property, Inc., ensuring that every track is not only art, but education, empowerment, and legacy.

Coffy Box Music is more than a label. It is a communal archive, a creative classroom, and a sonic revolution.

Complicating the Ingénue

Coffy

Related tracks