ZineUK Introducing: Power Struggle - Aspirations
Something is happening.
Both sides of the watery mass.
From revolutionary optimism, to beat lead activism.
From here in the UK with the visceral Bob Vylan (Firm ZineUk Fave, finally getting heard), to the underground hip hop scene in the US.
The underground is going overground as people awake up to the decline and they look to soundtrack dystopia, educate, and just fucking vibe out alienation in roots, rebellion and resistance. It’s what we do, and have always done from The Cutty Wren to God Save The Queen.
It was with this in mind that stunned me to silence whilst listening to the simply unparalleled Rev Left Radio last week.
Power Struggle, or Nomi to his friends, is the real deal. An organiser for workers rights and a migrant activist away from the studio, he effortlessly translates his passion into the microphone. A microphone that has been to hand over the last almost 20 years. Just from the snippets from Rev Left, I knew I needed to find out more. A glorious auditory rabbithole later and I am agape at the lyrical artistry on 2016’s This Mic Kills Fascists, digging deeper to Remittances and more..
But being in the UK, it is hard to authentically speak about the almost mythologised Bay Area Hip Hop scene in a way that those who have actually experienced it can. I am forced to take on listening to Aspirations at face value, but I implore you, dear reader, to not allow my naive little words deter you. This is music worth listening to.
Aspirations is only seven tracks long, but what it lacks in quantity is not lost on quality.
First track is ‘Power Struggle Is the Anthem’ (feat GXGANTE).
“Fluid is the music that soothes the melancholy.”
Described modestly by Nomi as an opener determined to encompass what the last two decades of what making music has been about. Lyrically, the track instantly takes you into a manifesto. Addressing Donald Trump, indigenous access to clean water, Hồ Chí Minh all in the first verse, before a pounding chorus that lays the plan bare? We are starting as we want to go on.
Live it Up.
“Your music might be gangster, but mine is militant.”
Defiantly one of my favourite tracks. Whilst Nomi is talking about the absurd inequality in San Francisco and similar big cities, exploring the contradictions he sees on a day to day basis, it could describe the alienation and struggle anywhere in the west. A shout out to the Young Lords in a powerful line about living in the past with a doomed future. “We need Angela Davis not Jay Z.” In-fucking-deed.
Organizing Steadily (feat. Amihan, RAHSELLA)
“If you’re fucking with Biden or Trump, you’re dumb”
In Nomi’s own words: An ode to all the genuine activists, organizers and revolutionaries that dedicate themselves to serving the people. A reminder that social change takes painstaking work can not be performative or for clout chasing.
Kultural Worker
“Motivate the masses to overthrow the overlords, symbolic relationship between pen and sword.”
Sounds like a the manifesto of our times. A hooky chorus with lyrics that will both appeal to the artists who still genuinely touch hands with their community as well as praising them.
Every Morning Still Mourning
Echos of Amiri Baraka in a track featuring the poet laureate of San Francisco CA, Tongo Eisen Martin. The vagrant who enjoyed school. This track needs to be experienced not postulated about.
My Anxiety
“Police killing everybody, but the system don’t care.”
Nomi and Emassin present an examination of anxiety and depression and how it’s not just created by internal issues but also the external, the capitalist system, the centuries of diaspora exploitation. Indeed, ‘What greater indictment of a system could there be,’ than an epidemic of mental illness?’
The Hammer
“In the ghetto, the manifesto is often written by the wisdom of the women who survived the damn system”
The last track but no less important. Shout outs to Malcom X, Harriet Tubman, Fidel Castro and more without feeling preachy. A reflective soundtrack to all the young activists who need to feel that despite what and who we lose on the way, there is still a world to win.