Aja Monet’s music will swallow you whole.
Her instrument, a velvet smooth voice, indulges in long, winding soliloquies spoken in cursive. Like a lozenge, her voice soothes and sends chills.
Artists like Dua Saleh, conscious rapper D Smoke and singer Eryn Allen Kane have all made use of Monet’s trustworthy yet authoritative skills as a narrator.
Of course, it's her poetry — which has been winning awards, drawing tears and stirring complex thoughts since her days as a childhood slam champion — that Monet’s best known for. Her own writing, paired with the conviction from her sternum, cuts through.
By osmosis, her expressions are instantly realized in the brain of the listener, where she assumes the role of a spiritual and moral guide. On her new album, the color of rain, the follow-up to her widely praised debut, when the poems do what they do, the journey is more than worth taking.
So many songs on the poet’s latest project are worth a second, third and fourth examination.
the color of rain
Monet’s work can be beautiful, political, prophetic and thought-provoking. Her second album, the color of rain, is all of those things.
Imagine slowly walking down an illuminated tunnel, the kind they put up for cars during Christmastime, as a guided meditation plays in your brain, building your courage with each step. That’s the feeling of listening to “say it with your chest,” the album opener. It's a sonic pat on the back.
That first track makes way for the color of rain’s de facto intro, as well as its most popular single, “elsewhere.” Here, Monet describes what’s to come as “surreal blues” and "rhythm with no algorithm.” The song, a groovy ode to Sly Stone, features soulful vocals from Georgia Anne Muldrow and the album’s musical director Meshell Ndegeocello. Peppered in are appearances from many of the album’s other collaborators, like Mereba and Mick Jenkins, plus cameos from Kota The Friend and LA DJ/Sly Stone progeny Novena Carmel, all getting down.
Like with those depicted in its music video, the song is best enjoyed surrounded by friends on a nice summer day. Or, if you just need that feeling.
“Evacuate Hollyweird,” Monet urges on another standout track, “hollyweird,” which takes aim at the inequities and hypocrisies exposed by the LA wildfires. Here, like on “for the Congo” later, chaotic experimentalism comes to the fore. The song connects dots both natural and geopolitical over beeps and pyrotechnics, laying bare the systemic problems exposed by the flames.
“Can a millionaire be homeless?” asks Monet. “All of a sudden, we know the meaning of community. All of a sudden, the spirit of giving is in the air … Nothing like disaster to shock a heart into beating … The feel-good volunteers did Reiki before they dropped off outfits for people with no events to attend.”
As for “for the Congo,” a song about actual war in the region and beyond, sunlight is again Monet’s preferred disinfectant. Drums heighten the anxiety.
“How many children die for the sake of my comfort today?" Monet asks, “How do I survive this inability to stop the worst acts known to mankind?”
“Tell them to talk about the blood!” she surmises. The poet’s gaze then sharpens on the decades-long rule of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the U.S. government's involvement in the Ugandan Bush War.
But it’s not all dour.
Every song on Monet’s sophomore album is constructed to compliment her voice, but on “every media minute,” with soft jazz lightly dribbling in the background, she really gives herself space to pop off. Monet offers lamentations on the American state, numbness, self worth, exhaustion, and love, especially from above. Any single line from “every media minute,” could be mulled on for months.
“There’s a whole lot of religion, and not enough God,” Monet says, repeating it once more. “I want a God who loves.”
Another bright song, "working class musicians," follows in the feet of its titular players: on the bus, in the subway, through the baggage claim, etc. The song, and its animated music video, paint a portrait of counter-culture characters living in between the lines ("We float between classes and corners, from caviar to canned beans"). Its bustling pace matches the day-to-day of an urban creative trying to make ends meet, but who also cherishes every second.
On “Melting Clocks,” a Salavador Dalí-inspired track, Monet enlists the aid of her hip-hop friends, Windy City wordsmiths Mick Jenkins and Vic Mensa. A guiro, or other ridged instrument raked by a stick, drives the song’s movement, which often swells and shrinks, deepening as the time slows. Time is a fascination throughout the color of rain, but never more plainly than here.
As for why she does it all in the first place, Monet’s interlude, “i came to the poem,” explains exactly that.
