SOUNDTRACK: SA-ROC-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #30 (June 4, 2020).
I have never heard of Sa-Roc, but I was blown away by her lyrics and delivery. I really enjoyed that her delivery was intense and serious, even angry, but her delivery was so thoughtful.
If you want protest music for the uprising of the American consciousness, then look no further. Sa-Roc (born Assata Perkins) is an emcee from southeast Washington, D.C.
Sa-Roc bears her heart and soul here, weaving together influential threads from her upbringing; Pan-Africanism, the hardship of her father’s experience as a sharecropper in Virginia and her own childhood in Congress Heights, D.C., an area ravaged by violence and the crack epidemic in the 1980s.
In this Tiny Desk (home) concert, she debuted two exclusives, “Deliverance” is about reassessing where you are in making a commitment to change things. I love the beats and the lyrics. She references Posdnous and De la Soul and then has this moment where she says this is the world’s tiniest violin and a violin sample plays.
After the song, she lights some sage to clear the energy. She wants her space to experience joy and to be a stress-free peaceful environments.
“Hand of God” is her latest single about staying true to yourself. It has a sung chorus and Sa-Roc has a pretty singing voice along with her flow. In the second verse she raps with a sped up version of herself which is pretty neat.
“r(E)volution,” is from her upcoming album, The Sharecropper’s Daughter, which is produced by her partner in life and DJ, Sol Messiah. It starts with a pretty guitar and a great bass line
On “r(E)volution” she spits bars: “Embedded in the home of the brave, the darkest of interiors. / Saw street scholars and soldiers defect cuz they post-traumatic stressed from the American experience.”
“Forever” is for little girls who ever felt like they were held to impossible societal standards; and if the world told them they weren’t good enough, weren’t valuable enough, weren’t worthy enough, weren’t dope enough to take up space or use their voice; they didn’t come from the right area or the right class or education; didn’t have the right skin tone or complexion; anything that made them feel less than. This is about how dope you really are with all of your perfect imperfections.
I love that after a quiet clapping moment the song soars with guitars and bass.
[READ: May 8, 2020] Kitten Clone
In the Douglas Coupland collection Shopping in Jail, there was an essay called “All Governments Seem to Be Winging it Except for China.” The essay said that it came from this book: Kitten Clone.
I wasn’t sure how interested I really was in reading about the history of Alcatel-Lucent, but I should have known that Coupland would do his thing and find an interesting and unique way to write about something that should be dull.
The only weird thing is that Coupland implies that he is alone on this excursion, but the photographs are not his (which is surprising since he loves art) the pictures are by Olivia Arthur.
This book is part of a series called Writers in Residence created by Alain de Botton, with the slogan: “There are many places in the modern world that we do not understand because we cannot get inside them.” Coupland’s book is the third in the series. The other two are Geoff Dyer: Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush and Liaquat Ahamed: Money and Tough Love: On Tour with the IMF.
This book looks into the past, present and future of Alcatel-Lucent and the cover of the book sets the stage: (more…)
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