BLM! Albums of Experience

Black lives matter! Black songwriters, musicians, and artists are an integral part of American music history. Jazz, blues, and rock music were all founded by Black people, and all around the world, regardless of heritage, Black music has influenced all who participate in the sprawling lineage of music. Here are a few albums that shine as inspiration and stand as standards by Black artists of yesterday and today, giving insight to Black experience and power.

AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (1990) by Ice Cube

Ice Cube wasted no time moving on from N.W.A., and actually managed to anger his former bandmates by using some material they’d come up with in their notebooks. Even without N.W.A., Ice Cube is a powerhouse, employing gritty production, hardcore beats, and his characteristic wordplay. Besides predicting the L.A. Riots, Ice Cube’s raps tell stories of Black experience in L.A. that are obviously still relevant today, especially concerning institutional racism. 

Samples are smart, often incorporating spoken word from newscasters like Tom Brokaw: “Outside the south central area, few cared about the violence because it didn’t affect them.” I’m not usually one for skits, a common feature on hip hop albums, but the ones here are meaningful and add value and flow rather than the usual bloated feeling on lesser albums. On “It’s A Man’s World,” Cube’s protégé, Yo-Yo, comes on to spar with Cube about sexism in hip hop, a theme she’s focused on in her own music. They both held their own, and introducing Yo-Yo here helped her make her way in the hip hop game. 

This is a classic in hip hop and another “must listen” in a long line of musical social commentary and in Black music history. Here, Ice Cube criticized a system he knows doesn’t value his life. Thirty years later and here we still are.

Freetown Sound  (2016) by Blood Orange 

Freetown Sound feels like a modern art exhibition that uses jazz, groove, bedroom pop, vocal clips, and spoken poetry as a way to display the pain and beauty of the Black experience in America. Tucked into “Hands Up,” we hear the voices of protesters as they shout “don’t shoot, don’t shoot.” We hear the voice of Marlon Rigg from the 1994 Documentary Black is Black Ain’t, as he preaches “Black can make you move forward, and black can make you stumble around.” 

There is a particular magic in the way that Dev Hynes can weave together so many different painful feelings into this tropical, youthful, nostalgic, rich, and joyous world he created. It’s the type of album where you feel as though you accidentally started listening to a new album— every song is a bit different and could be broken up into multiple different songs. This is an album to listen to as you drive late at night while feeling sentimental.  

Let’s Get It On (1973) by Marvin Gaye

Let’s Get It On is one of the most emotionally intimate albums of all time. Marvin Gaye’s performance on songs like “If I Should Die Tonight,” “Just To Keep You Satisfied,” and “Please Stay (Once You Go Away)” teleports you into the beauty and sometimes heartbreaking moments of being involved with a romantic partner. Lush string arrangements aided by Gaye’s passionate vocals elevate the music throughout, creating an ethereal yet groovy atmosphere. His emotionally rich, seductive lyrics call the attention of listeners from all backgrounds, despite its release nearly 50 years ago.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) by Ms. Lauryn Hill 

By laying bare her experiences with love and faith as a modern-day Black woman, Ms. Lauryn Hill turned her debut solo album into a lasting cultural treasure. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a salve for young people everywhere facing life-changing decisions. Credited with being the bridge between hip-hop and “mainstream” music, Ms. Hill crafted a genre-defying feat of dichotomy: it’s in the versatility of her vocal style, switching between the voice of an angel and that of a hard MC; it’s in the conviction of her self-assured words, while written in a time of deep uncertainty. For an album overflowing with wisdom, it’s refreshingly not preachy. Instead, it feels endearingly authentic. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill contains many seemingly conflicting elements and themes: betrayal and loyalty, faith and fear, loss and joy. But it’s all woven together with an innocent and poetic discussion about love between poet Ras Baraka and a group of children.  Despite all its accolades and commercial success, the impact of this album is immeasurable. Ms. Hill is nothing short of a genius and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is about as close to perfection as God permits.

On the Corner (1972) by Miles Davis 

Released in October of 1972, On the Corner continued Miles Davis‘ ongoing trend of moving away from traditional jazz arrangement and instrumentation. Supposedly influenced in part by the work of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as by the funk music of the era, the album was intended to appeal to the younger African-American population which was abandoning jazz in favor of funk and rock. Columbia Records failed to show any real effort to market the album to the intended audience, and it ended up a commercial and critical flop. Of course, today it is now hailed as an influential jazz fusion record, as we love to find value in certain works of art after we have already cannibalized them. Play the record and find yourself getting smacked in the face with a wall of percussive furor and rhythmic improvisation, all dotted with the sparingly added melodic noodling of various electric and acoustic instruments over it. Sit back and trip out for 54 minutes and 54 seconds, you’ve earned it.

Stretch Music (2015) and NPR Tiny Desk Concert by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah

To all of the poor souls embroiling themselves in tense conversations regarding the Black Lives Matter movement with possibly apathetic parents or friends, I applaud you. This may be strange to say, but race relations have never been better, and these difficult talks are a necessary discomfort to take our next steps towards social equity. Fundamentally, we need to be facilitating empathy and compassion for others, and Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, along with his band, presents a performance at NPR’s hallowed desk so beautiful, even the coldest hearts may be touched. This sound expands beyond the American Jazz bubble, tastefully interspersed with gritty guitar riffs. 808s is a special show, as their new album, Stretch Music, had been released that day. Stretch Music is quite an apt name for the band’s sound, rooted in jazz but incorporating 808s and trap drums, among other worldly elements of the Black musical tradition.

The first song, “TWIN,” was written to “musically excavate all of the things that went into our [his and his twin’s] past” and features an incredibly diverse palette. “What you heard is a combination of rhythms from Mali, Senegal, Gambia, the Ivory Coast, Baneen(?)…[the sound] sort of makes its way into the Caribbean, to Cuba, and then eventually into New Orleans”. “TWIN” is built off of a forlorn piano theme, supported by desperate and bold verses from Adjuah’s trumpet, and a Carribean tresillo rhythm (i.e. “Despacito”). These textures combine into a soundscape that makes you want to dance, but with a feeling that the world is burning down around you.  

Adjuah’s infectious charisma is really what drew me into this performance, and his eloquent yet candid rhetoric can reach anybody with a willing ear. The second song, “West of the West,” is built off of a guitar riff that is head-bobbingly catchy, despite being written in an odd time signature: 7/8. When I first heard this in my junior year of high school, I was blown away and somewhat befuddled by the sheer artistry and mastery demonstrated in this track. Today, I still feel a sense of awe and admiration.

For those of you that need stirring words, please bump this snippet. Preceding this is a stirring personal recount of his traumatic experience with the New Orleans Police Department.

The emotional and social capstone of this performance comes in the last track, “Ku Klux Police Department.” His preceding speech hits just as hard today as it did five years ago, as he unpacks the cacophony of feelings that result from lying on the ground with a gun pointed at your head for no good reason after being pulled over for a “routine traffic stop.” “K.K.P.D” serves to inspire empathy for the Black community that has been continually oppressed. The song was written to serve as a harsh awakening to those who have grown up in their bubbles, those that dismiss the concept of systemic racism as sensationalized bullshit, and those who are privileged enough not to have personally seen or felt the abuse of violent, corrupt power. 

The most beautiful thing about music is that it has transcended racial boundaries in the U.S. for centuries, and this concert serves to push the envelope and spark more discourse on the topic of injustice. To those of you who feel stuck with language barriers between generations, Black music is an incredibly powerful method of sparking and strengthening empathy, compassion, and discussion. I hope that sharing this Tiny Desk Concert provides another option of communication for those who feel lost or stuck in a rut in their continual efforts to reach out to denialists. We are in the largest civil rights movement in history, yet most of the change will happen at home, with family, as hearts finally reach hearts and reach agreements on the most glaring flaw that America is built on.

Telefone (2016) by Noname

Noname’s debut mixtape, Telefone, is a complicated and beautiful work of art that tackles topics ranging from love and dating to mortality and police brutality, unfortunately prevalent in her hometown of Chicago. Born Fatimah Nyeema Warner, she spent her youth in her mother’s bookshop and began her creative career writing and performing slam poetry.

Her poetic background shines throughout the ten tracks on the project as she paints vivid images in songs like “Diddy Bop” and “Shadow Man,” while also using her phenomenal writing chops to discuss loss and fear in “Yesterday” and “Reality Check.” Telefone utilizes melancholy lyrics delivered by smooth vocals over laid back percussion and beautifully simplistic, yet effective production, all to create an unforgettable record that is as applicable today as ever.  

6 Feet Deep (1994) by Gravediggaz 

Gravediggaz is, to date, the most metal of all hip hop groups. While the successors to their legacy have incorporated overt elements of metal, such as harsh vocals and horror iconography, the horrorcore legends that make up Gravediggaz have yet to be surpassed in terms of the evil creative energy all over 6 Feet Deep. The members of Gravediggaz developed unique personas for this project, listed as follows: Wu-Tang’s RZA as The RZArector, Too Poetic as The Grym Reaper, Frukwan as The Gatekeeper, and Prince Paul as The Undertaker. 

Prince Paul’s production across their debut is some of the best in all of hip hop. Be it the dissonant piano on the cheeky stoner anthem “Constant Elevation,” the bombastic drums and ominous ambience of the grimy banger “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide,” or the murky bass on the meditative “1-800-Suicide” that, frankly, was decades ahead of its time. The soundscape of that last track in particular presaged the growth of cloud rap in the early 2010s – it would not sound particularly out of place on an early A$AP Rocky mixtape. 

The genre of horrorcore is often unfairly solely attributed to Gravediggaz (though this erasure of the Houston scene will not be tolerated here), but it is easy to see why this group became emblematic of the genre altogether. Lyrically, Gravediggaz cover topics such as death, crime, psychedelics, and nihilism, but with such flippancy that most of the album sounds veritably cheerful and effortless. Gravediggaz proved that horrorcore was not an inherently self-serious genre. However, the darkness that permeates the album is unique to this subgenre of hardcore hip hop. 

The legacy of Gravediggaz is secured – their brand of slightly off-kilter hardcore N.Y. hip hop explicitly influenced the aesthetic and music of popular groups such as Flatbush Zombies. Despite being arguably a less remembered offshoot of Wu-Tang, the Gravediggaz are regarded similarly, as a grimy gem of the golden era of hip hop.

B-Side Contributors: Daniella Ivanir (Freetown Sound), Tyler Harding (6 Feet Under)

Special guest writers from the community: Sarah Piñon (Let’s Get It On), Hjordis Grogan (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill), Jeremiah Rodriguez (On the Corner), Tyler Bagnol (Stretch Music), Nicolas Gutierrez (Telefone)