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. ​

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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

Sugar’s Home is a playful fusion of comedy, seduction, and soulful groove — a track that blurs the line between absurd theater and intimate confession. Adapted from Sugar Tone, it unfolds like a cabaret sketch: a dancer balancing a sandwich, pulling audience members through the fourth wall, even pickpocketing under her spell, while a silent “Creepy Guy” stacks money in the shadows.

The verses deliver smooth, R&B‑infused poetry about healing touch and sugar‑sweet devotion, while the chorus flips into comic relief — “Sugar’s home… and a sandwich.” Soul claps, spoken word interludes, and gospel‑tinged affirmations (“The power of life and death is in the tongue”) elevate the track into something both humorous and heartfelt.

At its core, Sugar’s Home is Ruby Hustle’s stage of seduction: a love song wrapped in satire, a comedy sketch wrapped in groove. It’s a testimony to the power of words, the absurdity of desire, and the mystery of whether Ruby herself has become the target.

Sugar's Home

Description: Club Surrender is a haunting spoken‑word track adapted from GT McCoy’s poem Ev’nin at Ruby’s. Told through the unreliable narration of a man “just chillin’ in the parlor,” the song paints a vivid portrait of Ruby — a dancer caught between allure and survival, glamour and danger.

The verses move like a noir monologue, describing Ruby’s garters, perfume, and stage presence while questioning her choices, her children, and her inner sense of self. The chorus echoes like a warning: She’s no contender, sweet and tender, losing her innocence at Club Surrender.

Layered with imagery of voyeurs, businessmen, ex‑offenders, and “good girls drafted to a bad team,” the track exposes the blurred line between performance and exploitation. By the end, Ruby disappears — her absence marked only by a tiny headline in the morning paper: “Mother of three missing, poof, gone.”

Dark, cinematic, and unsettling, Club Surrender is both a character study and a cautionary tale. It mixes seduction with suspicion, comedy with tragedy, leaving listeners to wonder: was Ruby playing the game, or was the game playing her?

Club Surrender (Ruby)

Inside My Little Black Box opens Act I with a trap‑cabaret fusion that transforms the stage into a living mystery. The track begins with a theatrical spoken intro — “The guests have arrived…” — before bursting into fan‑dance rhythms, soul claps, and bass hits that implicate the audience as part of the show.

Verses weave playful seduction with poetic testimony: fishnets, tilted Stetsons, and Cupid’s muse set the scene for a night of taboos broken and lovers drawn closer. The chorus becomes a mantra of spectacle — “Inside my little black box, a question stirs, the answer shocks. Comedy, music, dance, and rhyme… Blow me a kiss, baby, it’s showtime.”

With detectives weaving through the crowd and spoken‑word chants that promise love and revelation, the track blurs cabaret, trap, and theater into one immersive performance. It’s bold, cheeky, and intoxicating — a musical invitation to step inside the black box, where every guest becomes part of the story.

Inside My Little Black Box - Coffy Box Rom~Com Show Opener

Unpimpable is the untouchable dancer’s anthem — a bold declaration of power, resilience, and self‑worth. Set against the backdrop of Reba’s failed seduction, the track contrasts aloof confidence with the traps of exploitation.

The verses flow like silk and steel, weaving imagery of Cinderella dreams, John Henry strength, and the unbreakable wishbone of survival. The pre‑chorus flips into playful bravado — “How’s your pimping feel tonight? My pimping feels right.” — while the chorus delivers the hard truth: They don’t need your body, they already got your mind.

This is a song about refusing commodification, rejecting manipulation, and standing firm in identity. With trap‑cabaret swagger and lyrical grit, Unpimpable becomes both a performance piece and a manifesto: no price can afford dignity, no game can break the backbone of belief.

Unpimpable

Dazzlin’ Darlin’ is the mistress’s anthem — a trap‑cabaret fusion that flaunts power, mocks wives, and revels in unapologetic seduction. Adapted from Jessica Holter’s Dazzlin’ Darlin’ poem, the track sparkles with spoken word sass, whispered taunts, and choruses that drip with razzle‑dazzle confidence.

Verses paint the portrait of a woman who thrives on attention and influence, sipping corporate secrets, flipping stock tips, and dazzling men into submission. The bridge and breakdown push the satire further, turning “gold‑digger” accusations into a manifesto of self‑possession: Don’t hate a ho… Love a ho. Let’s have lunch.

With its mix of humor, bravado, and biting social commentary, Dazzlin’ Darlin’ exposes the contradictions of patriarchy while celebrating the mistress’s untouchable allure. It’s bold, cheeky, and intoxicating — a performance piece that turns scandal into spectacle.

Dazzlin' Darlin'

Hail Mary House Prayer ~ Sarah-Sarah breaks up the party at Club Surrender in this scene from Jessica Holter's Players & Pearls at Club Surrender.

Hail, Mary (Femme House Prayer)

Hail Mary (Femme House Prayer)

Club Surrender Trap-Cabaret Remix written and arranged by Jessica Holter

Club Surrender (Trap-Cabaret Remix)

Keeping People Amused by Jessica Holter for Coffy Box Music and Cabaret Soundtracks

Keeping People Amused

Written by Jessica Holter for the Truth is a Trap House Soundtrack

F*ck Your Blue Suit

My Manic Mother was adapted from the poem Saturday Mournings by Jessica Holter. Waiting for your mother to come visit you in foster care can be heartbreaking. It's a good thing Little Jessica found a hero.

My Manic Mother

My Manic Mother (Foster Child in a Glass Pane)

Sons & Weapons was adapted from Jessica Holter's poem Dick Law which appears in her book, Truth is a Trap House.

Sons & Weapons

Sons & Weapons (Dick Law)

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.