As a fellow Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville Periscope alum, I was especially excited to chat with jennapple. Somewhere between talking about tacos, Italian food, Broadway, Billy Joel, Madonna, AI cartoons, and rap battles, I ended up making Italian Beef Tacos inspired by jennapple. Don’t worry..we’ll get to the recipe later. But first, let’s talk about the artist behind it all.
Before our interview, I did what I always do and went down the artist rabbit hole. It started with her “BBL Drizzy” track and somehow turned into me bouncing around songs like “Runaway,” “One Ugly Christmas,” “Trap House,” and eventually her latest single, “SDNDL.” The thing about jennapple is that every time you think you’ve figured out what lane she’s in, she takes a sharp left turn and shows you something completely different. Which makes perfect sense when she describes herself as “Billy Joel meets Madonna.”
Music has been part of jennapple’s life for as long as she can remember. Her grandfather was a union trumpet player in Philadelphia. Her mom played trumpet and piano. There was always music around the house, and by the time she was three years old, she was already picking out songs on the piano. She was singing in church before she could even read, memorizing lyrics and performing with older singers. The bug started early. The funny thing is that she didn’t actually go to college planning on becoming a musician. She started out as a math education major. Yep. Math. Then, during her freshman year at the University of Tampa, the school launched a musical theater program. She auditioned for a show, joined choirs, and quickly found herself immersed in a world she hadn’t originally planned on entering.
A turning point came when Broadway performer Anne Reinking—best known for playing Grace in the original Annie movie and later choreographing the Broadway revival of Chicago—spent a week teaching students. The experience left a lasting impression. At the time, jennapple thought she might end up on a Broadway stage. Ironically, she was often told she could never be a pop singer. Thankfully, she’s never been particularly interested in letting other people decide what she’s capable of. One thing led to another. Karaoke nights became opportunities to perform. A bartending job put her around live music. A move to Chicago led to bands, songwriting, and eventually finding her own voice as an artist.
One of my favorite stories from our conversation involved her “BBL Drizzy” track. If you somehow missed that entire internet moment, Metro Boomin launched a contest challenging people to create their own version of the diss track. jennapple’s friends immediately told her she needed to enter. So she did. Instead of simply covering it, she wrote her own rap. And it’s fantastic. I turned it on before our interview and immediately understood why people are still listening to it. The experience opened a whole new creative lane for her. Since then, she’s written a collection of clever, character-driven rap tracks like “The Bee’s Knees” and “Planet Fitness,” channeling some of that old-school storytelling energy while still sounding completely like herself.
At one point we started talking about genre, and suddenly everything clicked. jennapple describes her music as “classic contemporary.” I immediately wrote that down. Because that’s exactly what it feels like. Classic genres. Contemporary themes. Billy Joel. Madonna. Soul. Pop. Country. Blues. Rap. All living under the same roof. That idea is at the center of the massive trilogy project she’s currently building. The first album explores pop and soul. The second dives into country, western, and blues. The third leans into pop, rap, and hip-hop. As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, the entire project is tied to a semi-autobiographical cartoon universe that blends jennapple’s own experiences with an AI-inspired version of herself.
What I loved most was hearing her talk about expectations. Or rather, her lack of them. jennapple told me she tries not to place too many expectations on outcomes. That doesn’t mean she isn’t ambitious. It simply means she focuses on the things she can control. Her expectation is that she’ll show up, create the best work she can, put it into the world, and let the rest happen however it’s going to happen. Honestly, that’s probably one of the healthiest approaches to creativity I’ve heard in a while.
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When it comes to food, jennapple spent more than five years working as a lead chef at Cheesecake Factory. Not only is she a foodie, but she’s someone who genuinely understands food. Sauces, desserts, salads, cheesecakes—she worked her way through just about every station in the kitchen. Food is deeply rooted in her family, too. Growing up Italian meant homemade ravioli, homemade sausage, Sunday dinners, and relatives who took cooking very seriously. She told me stories about her Uncle Bob making fresh ravioli every Christmas and spending weeks making Italian sausage by hand before finally getting a sausage stuffer as a gift. Those meals still represent some of her strongest food memories.
On her mom’s side, it was a different kind of nostalgia. Philadelphia cheesesteaks. Neighborhood restaurants. East Coast comfort food. Then there were summers in New Jersey spent fishing and crabbing. Fresh fluke, flounder, sea bass, and crab all became part of her food story. She’s also surprisingly particular about seafood. She loves sushi. She loves seafood. But don’t bring her eel. And she’s definitely not excited about raw octopus. Although she did spend time working as a sushi chef, which has since inspired a new anime-inspired project she’s developing called Sushi Warrior. Again, every time you think you’ve figured out jennapple, she introduces another layer.
These days, she practices intermittent fasting, usually eating between 3 p.m. and 11 p.m., fueled mostly by coffee during the day. And while her Italian roots run deep, one thing became very clear during our conversation. jennapple loves tacos. A lot. She’s worked at a few taco restaurants in the Nashville area, maybe for the discounts and free tacos 🙂 She proudly admitted she can eat tacos one day and then happily go out for Mexican food the next. Somewhere along the way, she also started telling me about how she turned her refrigerator into what was essentially a Cheesecake Factory prep station during the pandemic. She’d stock it full of ingredients and create elaborate salads throughout the week. It sounded like an amazing idea.
By the end of our conversation, I knew exactly what the recipe needed to be. jennapple is Italian. jennapple loves tacos. Italian Beef Tacos. Done. Seasoned beef, melty mozzarella and provolone, chopped giardiniera, and crispy tortillas bring together two of jennapple’s culinary worlds in one bite. It’s a little unexpected. It’s a little playful. It probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. Which, now that I think about it, might be the perfect way to describe jennapple’s music too. I also threw a little extra cheese onto the tortillas while they were still in the pan, letting it cook down until it was perfectly crispy and golden, adding a little surprise crunch to the tacos. Check out the recipe below, and while you’re cooking, give “SDNDL” a listen. Just consider yourself warned—you might start with a single track and find yourself tumbling down that same jennapple rabbit hole I did. You can find her music on all streaming platforms.
Italian Beef Tacos
Makes: 8 tacos
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients for the Beef
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 cup beef broth
Ingredients for the Tacos
- 8 small flour tortillas
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 cup shredded provolone cheese
- 1/2 cup chopped giardiniera, drained
- 1 cup shredded romaine or leaf lettuce
Directions
- Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and cook until browned, breaking it up as it cooks.
- Stir in the garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, basil, crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and black pepper.
- Add the Worcestershire sauce and beef broth. Simmer for 3–4 minutes until the liquid reduces slightly and the beef is flavorful and juicy.
- Heat a clean skillet or griddle over medium heat.
- Sprinkle a small handful of mozzarella and provolone directly over the skillet. Immediately place a tortilla on top of the cheese. Cook for 2 minutes, until the cheese underneath turns golden and crispy.
- Flip the tortilla and cook the second side for about 30 seconds. Repeat with the remaining tortillas.
- Stir 2 tablespoons of the giardiniera oil into the cooked beef just before serving.
- Fill each tortilla with the seasoned beef.
- Top with lettuce, chopped giardiniera, and an extra sprinkle of mozzarella and provolone while the beef is still hot.
- Serve immediately while the tortillas are crispy and the cheese is melty. Enjoy!
