aja monet - the color of rain (drink sum wtr) [Spoken Word]

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's June 7th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

Aja Monet leapt to prominence by winning the spoken word Grand Slam at NYC’s prodigious Nuyorican Poets Café at the young age of nineteeen; that’s quite a feat in the city’s competitive slam poetry scene. She’s spent the subsequent twenty years honing her “surrealist blues poetry”, whilst her inherent activism, and the Aja Monet Foundation’s arts education, community work and efforts with marginalised youth, make her something of a force of nature, and for all sorts of good.

Whether spoken or spat, talking loud and saying something is par for the course with Monet, and if she’s spitting, you better duck; though mostly there’s a soulful and gentle forcefulness to her vocal delivery, reinforced by a scholarly lyrical depth. The album moves, grooves, rises and falls, but even at her quietest, you don’t dare check your messages for fear of missing something deep or meaningful, often both. It’s also very much a live affair, with a host of the city’s finest players in the studio collectively reflecting on the past and present of black music, whilst quietly mapping its future. If that wasn’t enough, the recording was co-guided by none other than Meshell Ndegeocello, and the result is a soul, jazz and spoken word woven dream made very real.

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Playlist Companion

Find monet in the End of Week Freak Playlist.