Burlesque performer, Foxy Lexxi Brown, is a powerful Black goddess — and she knows it. “When I step onto the stage now, what’s going through my head is ‘You’re welcome.’” At the time of the interview, Brown had just returned back home to Montreal, Canada after a 6 week long European tour and was still reeling from the audience’s praises. For the last stop of her tour, Brown performed at the Alpes Burlesque Festival in Grenoble, France on April 26, 2025. As the final act of the two day festival, Brown received that night’s first and only standing ovation following her performance entitled Jungle Queendom.

“[The act] is a nod to the past, present, and future of Black women.” Brown explains. “I wanted to play off of the negative stereotypes of Black women.” The act begins with the haunting sound of a whip cracking and Nina Simone’s rendition of “Strange Fruit” – the Civil Rights Era ballad about the lynching of Black Americans. The crowd, who has been shouting and clapping all night long, remains uncharacteristically quiet as she moves slowly to the somber music, until the track suddenly shifts to the upbeat “Jumanji” from artist, HEDEGAARD. Through the remainder of the performance, Brown dances, shakes, and disrobes with an unapologetic fierceness, and the crowd holds nothing back. At one point she crosses her arms in an X, referencing Wakanda Forever from Marvel’s Black Panther. The song finishes as Lexxi strikes her final pose, center stage with one fist raised in the air, proclaiming Black Power, without speaking a single word.

“Representation always matters,” she states, “but the more I travel and perform, the more I see how true that really is.” With over a decade of experience and accolades in burlesque performance, Brown feels she has more room to explore and try new things that aren’t typical of burlesque. The first time she performed this act was in Chicago on Juneteenth in 2024. At that time she only knew how the act would start, when she would remove certain garments, and how it would end. The rest of the act was improvised and has been refined over time through her performances and audience reception. The overwhelmingly positive reaction has been unexpected for Brown. “You create these acts and you think they’re cool, but you never know how people are going to react… When I perform this, 90% of the time there is a standing ovation.”

Off of the stage, Brown’s life has been transformed by burlesque. She got her start in 2013 after a friend invited her to see her first burlesque show. Captivated by the performance, she took her first steps to starting lessons that same night. “I always knew I wanted to be on the stage,” Brown recounts, “I’m not a good singer and my dancing isn’t good enough to be a Beyonce backup dancer, but when I saw [burlesque] I knew this is what I wanted to do.”

Her burlesque education was as much about the art of burlesque as it was about self-actualization. Growing in confidence, loving herself and her body, throwing off the expectations and judgements of others, and learning to embrace insecurities have all been a part of Brown’s formation. In her Jungle Queendom act, she pushes herself to define Black femininity for herself by performing with her natural, short hair and taking time to dance with her back fully exposed to the audience. “I used to feel ashamed of my back because people said it was too wide, too masculine. But my journey in burlesque and drag helped build my confidence. Now I feel more empowered and embrace myself fully,” she shares in an Instagram post.

Brown is also a dedicated mother to her 16 year old daughter. Despite only recently seeing her mother perform burlesque for the first time, her daughter has been positively impacted by the personal lessons Brown has learned through the art. “She just wrote me a Mother’s Day card where she said how proud she was of me after seeing me perform and how thankful she is that I have shown her how to be confident and unafraid of being herself.” Together, Brown and her daughter have also performed in a drag show as Beyonce and Blue Ivy.

In June 2025 Foxi Lexxi Brown performed her Jungle Queendom act at “the superbowl of burlesque” – the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, competing against 11 others for the title of Mx. Exotic World. She was awarded 1st Runner Up.
You can find more information about her classes, performances, and glamorous, extra life on Instagram @foxylexxiofficial and on TikTok @foxylexxi