Life Told Through Rap - New Amerykah
A musical journey through space and time
Author’s note: This is a work of fiction. The only thing real about this story is the music.
“In their phones were antennas, and these antennas sniffed out an invisible world…a world that was all around them, and also nowhere, transporting them to places distant and near, and to places that had never been and would never be.” ― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
“Brrrinng!”, the alarm on her phone wakes her up. A girl in her mid-to-late teens stretches and gets out of bed. She plays some music from her phone’s speakers as she heads into the bathroom, getting herself ready for the day.
The soundtrack is a mix of J-Dilla’s Donuts and the various samples that led to its creation. The girl finishes her morning routine just as Dionne Warwick’s “You’re Gonna Need Me” is about to morph into the reverential “Stop”.
The girl puts on a red helmet with a brown leather facemask and steps onto her glider, the sounds emanating from her phone’s speakers now coming directly to her ears through a wireless earpiece. She hovers over an abandoned building just as “Time: The Donut of the Heart” starts playing, looking for a faded sign saying: “Dilla’s Delights. Because beats and donuts are made best before sunrise”.
The girl finds the sign and is confident that this is the right place. She lands her glider in front of the store, it’s door completely rusted and left ajar due to the growing vegetation outside. She walks through the shop and imagines it filled with people: people hungry for some pastries while their favorite tracks are played endlessly on repeat. She imagines herself as one of these people, wishing that she was born in a different time.
As the girl ventures upstairs, she comes across a vast record collection split into two sections: one saying “from Dilla” and the other saying “for Dilla”.
In the “from Dilla” section, the records are organized alphabetically, some from the recent past and others a bit more distant, each one sparking memories of the beats they would later become.
Meanwhile, in the “for Dilla” section, the girl finds records from artists that are more familiar to her, artists she knows existed within the same timeframe as her favorite producer. Amongst these records, she stumbles across one titled New Amerykah – its artwork immediately capturing her attention.
The girl takes off her helmet and facemask and stares at the album more intensely, catching a reflection of herself as she reaches for her afro pick to comb out her hair. She takes the vinyl out of the cover and places it on a record player that she left behind from her last trip.
As soon as she presses play, the girl is mesmerized by a variety of sounds: from funk to hip-hop to some warped variation of classic R&B. She dances along to the album until she hears those horns, her body suddenly riddled with goosebumps in anticipation of a Dilla beat she hadn’t heard before. A flute interrupts this aural high and brings the girl back down to earth, gently moving her from a state of ecstasy to one of serenity.
The girl struggles to makes sense of the song’s lyrics but closes her eyes and tries to sing along, picturing herself clapping in the studio as the songstress stacks her harmonies.
The girl lets the song play until the very last note before she picks the record up and places it back in its sleeve. She types the name of the record in her phone and walks back downstairs. As she puts her helmet and facemask back on, the girl looks at the store one last time, promising to be back again sometime soon.
With a new album to carry her through the week, the girl steps onto her glider and thinks about the beauty of music. The way it connects her with a past she barely knew. Her phone rings and she picks up the call, grateful to have, once again, experienced the best thing that survived us all.
Further Reading
[1] Erykah Badu, When Erykah Met Dilla, Red Bull Music Academy
[2] Connor Towne O’Neill, Life Is A Donut: Reassessing J Dilla’s Legacy, Red Bull Music Academy
Further Watching
[1] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
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Yours Truly,
John Noire
This was a gorgeous read! I saw myself in the girl. a lover of music. constantly on the pursuit of a new sound.