DC rapper NAPPYNAPPA has been phenomenally busy this year. Fittingly for a rapper with a fluid, stream-of-consciousness style, it's as if the creative levee has been broken and there's no way to stem what's been unleashed. Already four (yes, four) albums deep into 2020 and he's now announced the coming release of a fifth. The core of new project IFEELJUSTLYKTHEIRART is the cultural devastation wrought by colonialism and the question of what comes next.
While you wait for the November 27 release, you can listen to one of the album's pivotal moments, "GHETTO SWAHILI", which features another DC lyricist with a dizzyingly rapid output, Rahiem Supreme. Together, the pair embark on a lawless, quick-witted exchange of bars, knocking rhymes back and forth across the meandering piano line and dusty kick drums. As is often the case with these two, imagery and metaphors are tightly-packed and only reveal themselves gradually, making for a slow-release listening experience that rewards patience and repeated visits.
Speaking on the post-colonial themes of the project, Nappy told us: "IFEELJUSTLYKTHEIRART is my magnifying glass on the void that turned to a cyclic portal left by years of my mother, not just Africa — though that is where most take place — but the entire Earth and our hearts and natural/native heritages and resources being stripped and extracted and rates that leave the babies born with only a thirst for our own blood... This ends with us."
IFEELJUSTLYKTHEIRART drops digitally and on limited edition clear vinyl on November 27 via Bad Taste Records. Pre-order the new album here.
