Laila’s Wisdom is Rapsody’s Long Overdue Breakout
Rapsody’s latest release Laila’s Wisdom begins with a flourish of keys and a dose of gospel courtesy of a sample from Aretha Franklin’s “To Be (Young, Gifted, and Black)”, which swells and then recedes behind a beat propelled by a choppy piano chord progression. The scene set, Rapsody enters the mix, triumphant as always, one fearless black woman replacing another. She begins by quoting yet another strong female figure in her life, reciting advice from her grandmother, the album’s namesake:
“Don’t worry about anything they told you/ remember what she said about winter and what the cold do/ everything’s a season there are some things you gotta go through/ believe me I done seen it all — you’re young talking to old you.”
She may not be a household name in the rap industry, but the 34-year-old MC from North Carolina is now a veteran in the game, and after a host of mixtapes, EPs, and high profile features, her second studio album is a testimonial of sorts. With this release, Rapsody is passing along her grandmother’s wisdom, just as she did, from one generation to another.
Just as many of her lines invoke her elders, Rapsody looks backward for musical inspiration, recruiting a team of veteran beatmakers and MCs — among them 9th Wonder, Terrace Martin, Busta Rhymes, and Black Thought — to craft an ode to the very music that made hip-hop: funk, jazz, and soul. In this way, among others, Laila’s Wisdom often seems inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s retrospective on the history of black music, To Pimp A Butterfly. In fact, Lamar is the album’s first featured artist, delivering a standout verse on its second track.
“Let’s talk about power,” he begins, before proceeding to touch on the myriad themes the term connotes, from money to influence to God. He speaks in a typical Kendrick cadence, his haphazard flow spilling over in irregular spurts from one measure to the next as he tiptoes nimbly around the pocket.
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On Laila’s Wisdom, Rapsody has surrounded herself with the vanguard, the old pros, the best of the best — including King Kendrick himself. The desired effect is that, in holding her own among her peers, she proves that this is where she belongs. The self-described tomboy has long been comfortable being seen as “one of the boys,” and works sports references into her bars as often as possible. (Over the course of this project she alludes to Lamar Odom, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and even Grayson Allen.) Yet make no mistake, Laila’s Wisdom is all about female power, particularly the black variety.
On “Pay Up,” she targets a reverse gold digger — a man who “preys on independent women,” eschewing rent responsibilities and stealing free minutes from his girl’s family plan with no intentions of an actual “family plan.” In calling out this form of female exploitation, Rapsody flips a familiar trope of the masculine hip-hop lexicon on its head.
In the chorus of “Sassy,” Rapsody alludes to Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise,” boasting of “diamonds ‘tween her knees” and “oil wells in her thighs.” Angelou asks the reader if her sexiness upsets them; here, Rapsody asks her listeners the same question.
“Nobody” is quietly star-studded, featuring uncredited vocals from Anderson .paak as well as a verse from The Roots’ mouthpiece Black Thought. In the gossipy second movement of the song, Rapsody crafts her verse around the structure of a phone conversation with a nameless friend who responds to Rapsody’s rhetorical questions by intermittently uttering an affirming “mmm hmm.” The effect is a continuous reiteration of black sisterhood, a device which portrays a common scenario — one in which black women have only each other to fall back on.
“Black and Ugly” is a defiant middle finger to everyone who ever thought attacking Rapsody’s appearance would bring her down. After withstanding a barrage of insults about her weight, skin, and hair over the course of her career, the 34-year-old rapper has emerged unscathed and unfazed. In her words, she’s “black and ugly as ever and still nobody fine as me.” Echoing similar themes from her feature verse in Kendrick’s “Complexion (A Zulu Love),” Rapsody convinces all her black brothers and sisters of their own beauty, whether “dark skinned or light skinned.” She also proves her tongue to be sharper than her critics’ with a series of verbal barbs, the most memorable of all being a backhanded explanation for taking the high road: “I don’t shit where I sleep so I don’t shit on y’all.”
Production steals the spotlight in the latter third of the album, with tracks like “U Used 2 Love Me,” “Knock on My Door,” and “Ooo Wee,” providing generous helpings of jazz, soul, and funk courtesy of Terrace Martin’s saxophone, BJ the Chicago Kid’s tender crooning, and Anderson .paak’s sultry swagger.
But then, suddenly, the party is cut short by a burst of gunfire and a police siren. This cold shock of reality heralds the sobering closer, “Jesus Coming,” in which Rapsody spins tales from the perspective of victims of drug abuse, gun violence, and war. This is Rapsody’s storytelling at its most powerful and most emotional; her voice cracks as she dissects grief, once again deftly weaving her bars around a raw, unsettling vocal sample that endlessly keens the phrase “Time to gooooo…” Her first verse depicts a young girl overdosing at a party after ceding to peer pressure in an attempt to quiet her own demons. In her second verse she channels a heartbroken mother and her innocent bystander daughter as she takes a hard look at the senselessness of gang violence, condemning the two gun-toting men who shoot a young girl “over colors she would color with.” In the third verse, Rapsody speaks as a soldier killed fighting an unnamed combatant over such shallow stakes as “money, oil, land, and gold.” In his dying moments, the soldier considers his enemy dying only yards away and realizes they are both praying to their own God and fighting for their own families. Amber Lavran of Moonchild provides the angelic vocals required of such a delicately somber song of mourning, soothing the anguish of each narrative voice with her own. The eulogy is a standout track on the album for its poignancy and the way it contrasts starkly with everything that precedes it.
As a whole, Laila’s Wisdom is a comprehensive representation of the everyday female experience: the highs, the lows, the blessings and the struggles of being a black woman in America. It’s a perspective that is underrepresented in most music, and glaringly so in hip-hop. Rapsody may have earned the respect of her male colleagues with her tomboyish wit and charm, but on Laila’s Wisdom she showcases the part of her that is feminine, smart, and resilient, while honoring the women of the past that made her so. And in spite of the all-star supporting cast, it is her light that shines the brightest. As fans, it’s time we pay up and give Rapsody her due recognition as one of the leading voices in hip-hop — she’s earned it.
