Quad Cities emcee Soe Heartlesz — “The Gorgeous Gangsta” and “Rap President of Peoria” — is a 36-year-old mother of five who recently won the Iowa Music Awards Female Rapper of the Year. After performing on dozens of stages around the Midwest over the past two decades, she’s maintaining her momentum with Cardiac Arrest, a mixtape that drops on Valentine’s Day (a.k.a. “Heartlesz Day”).
“S-o-e stands for Sister of Everyone,” explained the artist, who has five real-life siblings — four sisters and one brother. “And then Heartlesz is spelled with an s-z instead of an s-s because I’m not a coldhearted person. I have a really big heart, but I have to make sure it is taken care of properly so that it’s not mishandled.”
Brittnie Vaughn’s hip-hop journey began when she started writing poetry in 6th grade. In 10th grade, she graduated to putting her rhymes to a beat. After experiencing a big breakup sophomore year, she poured her heartbreak into her lyrics. Once she got going, there was no holding Soe Heartlesz back.
“I ended up getting a lot of friends based off me knowing how to rap, you know, like being able to rap to different people in the hallways. I became a sister of everyone, because I was gaining a lot of friends from rapping, and then I used ‘Heartlesz’ just because I wasn’t out there looking for another boyfriend after that. I was just out there trying to regain myself, so it all worked out.”
Soe’s passion for music was originally sparked by her involvement in church, where she sang in the junior choir and was involved in the youth ministry. She would write poems for Easter and Christmas programs, and she also helped out on the music side of things during those services. Some of her early hip-hop influences came from her older sisters, who were into MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Roxanne Shante and Lauryn Hill.
“Like, real throwback hip hop,” she said. “Their flow is what got me into rapping, and I was really inspired by those ’80s and ’90s rappers.”
After sharpening her skills in her high school hallways, Soe began recording songs around age 17. On her 21st birthday, she attended her first open mic night at a bar and decided to take a stab at rapping onstage.
“I just was intrigued, like, ‘Damn, they’re doing the thing,’ you know what I’m saying? I wanted to do that, too! From there, I just started performing. I performed on all the stages in the Quad Cities. I performed on all the stages in Des Moines, I performed on most of the stages in Iowa City, and I’ve been pretty much around the Midwest map, performance-wise.”
Growing her family hasn’t slowed Soe down in the slightest — she keeps writing, rapping, recording, rocking shows and organizing rap showcases for teenage girls. How does she pull all this off?
“I go through school days selecting and writing my material,” she explained, “studio sessions on the weekends, and at least two times a month I get booked for or schedule a performance in various cities. I just stay prayed-up and try to keep my brain sharp so that I can deliver the material that I imagine in my head to come out in the microphone.”
When it came time to submit her work to the Iowa Music Awards, she had her eye on the ball. Soe spent about $15,000 on her career last year, playing shows, making the Cardiac Arrest mixtape, and shooting a video for her new shit-hot single “Lay ’Em Down.”
“It really paid off,” she said of the IMAs. “There was a lot of exposure, and then I dropped the ‘Lay ’Em Down’ video right afterwards. So, if you see the video, it has a lot of footage from the Iowa Music Awards, because it was all hand in hand.”
The “Lay ’Em Down” beat comes from one of her favorite songs, “Adios” by Lil Boosie, but she flips it in a way that makes it her own, lyrically.
“I’m heartless, but I’m still a lady,” she explains. “I’m a little rough around the edges, but I clean up real nice. You know what I’m saying? I still got manners.”
Soe Heartlesz is a lady, but she comes hard and has something to say.
“It’s really like more of an art to me. Literally, like when they say ‘ride the beat,’ I will grab the steering wheel and take off. I’m a beat rider, so I feel like that’s where my flow developed. I’m really precise about my words, and when I started rapping, it made my delivery even more valuable because I can speak. You know, I can pronounce all my words, use correct grammar, so my words sound compassionate, with emotion.”
Soe is currently focused on the Feb. 14 release of Cardiac Arrest, produced by Gregory Cauthen. Many of the songs on this mixtape are covers of classic hip-hop songs that she customizes and puts her own spin on, like Public Enemy’s “911 Is a Joke.” She selected each track to show off all of the different flows she has in her arsenal, putting her own lyrical spin on originals.
“I want to make something spiritually uplifting,” she said. “That’s my number-one purpose behind everything, you know, with my music starting from the church. I know that everything that I say, it has to be genuine, and it has to be something that isn’t steering somebody in the wrong direction. If I’m clowning somebody, it’s for a purpose and it’s not at the expense of anyone else. It’s about what you have to do to get through, and I’m just encouraging my listeners to get through it, whatever it is.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2026 issue.
