Thanks for taking the time to chat with us this morning Miranda.
Thank you for reaching out and asking me to be part of this. I’m really honoured and appreciate the opportunity.

You mentioned earlier that you’ve got a gig tonight?
I’m actually attending one of Red Bull’s breakdancing events and then I’ll be at one of their snow events this weekend too.

That sounds like fun!
Yeah, I’m excited. Red Bull and Burton events are always fun. I’ve been working with Burton for the last two years so I’ve been kind of embedded on the Burton side, but I started working with Red Bull this past winter.

Would you mind telling us a bit about who you are, what you do…
I’m a hip hop artist and I also happen to snowboard. I started making more extreme sports-inspired music because I felt like I didn’t really know any women that snowboarded, so it was just a way of trying to find other riders who were like me. It just became this movement and me making that music was a way to connect with people. I feel like there’s a conversation that needs to be had about the lack of women in sports, the lack of people of colour in sports, and through my music, I want to highlight the lack of diversity in sports and the gender inequality we are seeing within sport in general.

What got you into this in the first place?
So hip hop is like my world, and then I started snowboarding, and it became a way for me to escape from the grimes. When I ride it’s a way for me to disconnect. I love performing but snowboarding was like a breath of fresh air.

“Culturally, where I come from… we’re not really used to seeing people that look like us on the mountain, and, for me, being a hip hop artist I felt like that would be an instant connection with the kids, that it was something that they could relate to”

I didn’t really have anyone to ride with because, where I come from, there’s more of a city lifestyle so people aren’t thinking about snowboarding. And from a female rapper standpoint, this sounds really funny [Miranda laughs], but I actually looked up on YouTube ‘female rappers that snowboard’ and found nothing. There was not one video, not one other female rapper that I could find that was snowboarding and I thought it was crazy because you see the integration of music with other sports: with basketball, with football… You see it in every other sport but for some reason not snowboarding. So, I thought, ‘I need to be the spokesperson of this, I need to be the female rapper that rides, I need to get other women into this, I need to get other rappers involved in this,’ and that’s how it all started.

Coming from a big city, do you think people don’t always feel snowboarding is particularly accessible to them?
I think it really comes down to visibility. If you take a young male straight from the Bronx, he never doubts that he can be a basketball player because that’s what he’s used to seeing but you don’t really hear him saying, ‘I’m going to be a professional snowboarder’. I think it just comes from the lack of visibility and the feeling that they can do that.

“I really hope they continue snowboarding and find the outdoors to be a safe place for them”

And, also, snowboarding is an extremely expensive sport, so the costs have always been a barrier and that’s why I think organisations like the Chill Foundation are so important because it takes away those costs and gets more people on the slopes.

Tell us about the work the Chill Foundation does?
A lot of the youths we work with come from different, not really pleasant situations, and it’s a way to remove them from that. We work with different cities, different boroughs, and different agencies. It’s usually a six-week program: we pick up the kids and bring them to the mountains a couple of times and there’s no cost to them and they get to be outdoors. I really hope they continue snowboarding and find the outdoors to be a safe place for them.

What do you think could be done about getting more people involved at lower costs?
It’s up to the whole snowboarding industry to make the decision to make it more accessible to people. If you’re paying $200 for a lift ticket, especially this season the prices have been astronomical, and for the average person, who is living paycheck to paycheck, that $200 is the difference between groceries and going to the mountain for the day. I think resorts need collectively to reduce the costs; we need to start offering some sort of reward system that can go with lift tickets. There must be a mutual decision where it’s not so much about making such a huge profit but more about getting people on the slopes. When you get more people on the slopes you’re still going to make money, but now more people can enjoy it.

What about in New York, do you have any indoor snow domes, or do you need to go to the mountains to be able to snowboard?
They just built Big Snow last year, which is extremely affordable. There’s a mini hill and a little terrain park, so perfect for learning. It’s about $30 for two hours and it’s close enough to the city so you get people from the city, people from New Jersey, and it’s open all year round.

I scrolled through your Instagram and saw that you’ve been doing some bits with Hoods to Woods [a non-profit organisation that promotes awareness of the outdoors to inner-city children through snowboarding] as well.
I think there are a lot of great organisations doing a lot of great things and Hoods to Woods have also been around for a long time and I feel like they don’t get as much shine as they deserve. Omar is an incredibly amazing human being and he lives and breathes this so when I heard about the Hoods to Woods foundation, I wanted to attend their program and share their things on social media, and interact with the kids. There should be no competition when it comes to bettering people and that’s exactly what the Hoods to Woods foundation does, just like the Chill Foundation.

If you think about what snowboarding has given you, what are the most important things you can think of?
Freedom. And it’s a no judgement zone. I always say that the music industry is really hard, it’s the most non-relaxing environment. There’s a lot constantly going on and snowboarding has always kept me grounded. It has always been a way for me to disconnect and reconnect. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, and there’s nothing like just sliding through the trees. It’s just the whole vibe, you can’t really explain.

What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered throughout your career and journey in the snowboard industry?
I always say being mixed [race] is being a combination of two different worlds. Usually, people always want you to fit in somewhere, but the reality is I’m a combination of two different worlds, I don’t fit in on just one side. And then of course the lack of people of colour on the slopes can be kind of frustrating. And being a woman. I always say that snowboarding is incredible but it’s also very much about the ‘bro culture’. It’s male-dominated and there’s so much testosterone and energy in snowboarding — and that’s great — but that’s also why we need more women on the slopes.

“There should be no competition when it comes to bettering people and that’s exactly what the Hoods to Woods foundation does, just like the Chill Foundation”

I went to this camp a couple of weeks ago, BT Bounds, and just being surrounded by fifty women was so empowering because when you hit a feature it’s a different vibe than with guys. You do this little thing and everybody’s like, ‘Yes girl, you did it!’. You need that as much on the slopes as you do in your personal life. You need women to hype you up because that’s how you progress.

I’ve always been mostly riding with guys, and it wasn’t until recently I started doing these camps and meeting a lot of new women to ride with. But in sports being a woman can be very intimidating because of the lack of support, and sometimes the environment can feel really intimidating. That’s why it took me so long to get into the park. There are usually all these dudes surrounding this feature and telling everyone to just send it. It was so stressful for me because I’m trying to learn how to do things and it can be really frustrating.

As women, we are so much more analytical in everything we do. Men don’t tend to think about the aftereffects and we do that. We want to walk around the rail, assess the landing zone, and guys they just go right over. And just having that conversation here, you realise you’re not the only one. We are all thinking these things in our head and it’s good talking about that, it helps eliminate the fear and helps you progress. Snowboarding is a rough sport, and it’s about getting more of that ‘It’s okay, it happens, we all fall, we are all learning, we are all here to have a good time’ mentality out there.

“It’s about breaking down that mentality of being better than the girl next to you and instead saying, ‘Listen, you can do this, and we should go and do it together’. We feel like we have to be the one that stands out when, really, it should be about us working together”

And then there’s the competitive vibe between women and I think the only reason women are so competitive towards one another is because of years of programming and putting us against each other, making everything about a competition. I don’t think that’s because of us, it’s because society has engraved that in us — that you and I can’t win at the same time. That’s not true. We can all win and we can all shine together.

It’s about breaking down that mentality of being better than the girl next to you and instead saying, ‘Listen, you can do this, and we should go and do it together’. We feel like we have to be the one that stands out when, really, it should be about us working together. And once you get talking to people, once you get to know them, you start building a friendship and that eliminates the competition.

Thinking back about where you are now and where you started, any advice you would give your younger self?
I would just say congrats and keep on going! I feel like everybody in the beginning thought I was a little crazy because I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be able to fuse hip hop and snowboarding,’ and nobody really knew what that meant because they had never seen it before. It was really just about starting this movement and I feel like that’s what I was able to do.

That’s what it’s always been about: to make people feel comfortable to join in and feel like they belong on the slopes. I made the decision to be like, ‘Listen, there’s a lack of diversity here and I want to help fill the gap so that more women and people of colour get on the slopes.’

Check out Miranda’s latest track, Winning Szn!

All photos by Christopher Vanderyajt.