"Should I go to the gym?" Jenny Penkin, 32, wonders out loud.
Penkin, who has just released her second solo album, All or Nothing, may be familiar to some as the vocalist of the Israeli future-soul band Masok. It’s Thursday afternoon and the city is busy.
We're sitting outdoors in a small cafe not far from Bograshov Street; car horns are honking, and loud trucks are rumbling by. An energetic Penkin is dressed in an oversized t-shirt, which displays the tattoos up and down her arms.
She has just come from a meeting with her manager, where they discussed social media around some of her newly released songs.
Music has been in Penkin’s life since a very young age.
Penkin, the daughter of a piano teacher, and her mother moved to Israel from Russia in 1994. “I was four years old, sitting on the potty and composing on my mother’s organ,” she remembers.
At 12, Penkin competed in the Israeli reality talent show Lihiyot Cochav (“To Be a Star”). While still in the army, she auditioned for The Voice but lost to Yuval Dayan in a sing-off in the first season. “I cried so hard,” Penkin laughs. I was almost 20, and only then did I realize—I was really good.”
Penkin spent a year in the US at the Berkley College of Music, but the distance from home, loneliness, and a desire for a more out-of-the-box approach to creativity took its toll.
She returned to Israel and started working on composing her own beats and writing songs, which she describes as a mix of contemporary R&B, hip hop, and soul trap.
Since then, a lot has happened
“There is a genre like this in the US, but in Israel, people are like, (she says in English with an exaggerated Israeli accent) ‘What is this? It’s rock? What is this? Is it hip-hop? What, Mizrahi?’”
Penkin has released several singles, an English extended play recording (EP), Him, On the Other Hand (2018), and her debut Hebrew album, It Is What It Is (2022). She’s worked with some of Israel’s leading musical artists, including hip-hoppers Teddy Neguse, Cohen, and Shazamat, as well as singers Marina Maximilian Blumin and Carolina.
In addition, she frequently headlines and guests at music shows and festivals, is a working DJ, and is a music teacher.
When it comes to creating music, for her, everything starts with the beat, Penkin says.
Learning to create those beats, add lyrics, and produce a song took practice. She realized this during a 2019 co-creation residency project in Berlin when she was under contract to write and record an EP within one month.
“That was when I understood that it’s like a muscle, just like when you go to the gym three times a week, it’s better than going once a week.”
Today, she uses that muscle a lot, and the beats are part of her daily life.
“When I hear a beat – any beat – I start having ideas – melodic ideas,” Penkin says. “So I record them on my phone, even when I’m walking on the street.” She beatboxes an example, “Kakam kakam kacha kakam kakam kacha…. the lyrics are important, but they come after.”
Penkin sips on an iced coffee as she talks about the music on her new album. One of the songs is Koolooloo, the story of the state of Israel, imagined as a woman, which Penkin wrote during the mass protests prior to October 7th. “ I felt Israel was like a lost girl, so I turned Israel into a woman and sang about her.
She’s 20, you know, and she doesn’t love herself. She goes with the wrong man, an abusive man. She’s lost and makes a lot of mistakes.” Renowned pianist and composer Nitai Hershkovits produced the song.
“He is amazing. He created the beat, and I fell in love with it immediately.”
Penkin also raps on the album in the songs Bimkom Livroach, Tirkedi (“Instead of Running Away, Dance”), and Ad Pa’am Haba (“Until the Next Time”); she hits softer R&B notes on others and delivers an ode to her days as a Dizengoff Center child in the song Yalda Shel Senter (“The Center Girl”).
“I want people to hear my music,” says Penkin, who has some die-hard fans and followers. “I want it to reach millions. I want to be a pioneer of R&B in Israel,” she adds emphatically.
The interview has reached its end. Penkin gets up and glances at her manager, who is working at a table nearby. Then she decides it’s time to flex another type of muscle and heads off to the gym.
Jenny Penkin will be performing on April 20 at the 420 Party at Kuli Alma and June 6 at the Queenta Festival. An album launch party will be held on June 8 at the Gagarin. For tickets: https://www.goshow.co.il/show/order/16200/42877