HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING is the final reckoning for Backxwash in a trilogy of what’s become one of the most astounding runs in extra confrontational noise-rap and creative autonomy over the last decade. Whereas its predecessors in Ashanti Mutinta’s 2020 breakthrough God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It and last year’s I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES heard the Montreal-by-way-of-Zambia rapper and producer tearing through her skin and soul with her own process of faith, trauma, vice and addiction, all while unspooling her identity, HIS HAPPINESS… goes an additional layer deep in her therapeutic catharsis by looking even further beyond her own timeline and understanding the plague of debts generationally burdened onto the individual by history. Mutinta’s rage has siphoned itself in a manner of precision through the boards’ heavy clash of industrial, electronic, and blast beat production, with assists from the likes of Michael Go, Morgan-Paige, and Pupil Slicer, though by the time the listen concludes with a soulful inspo of ‘70s R&B and Motown leading it out, it feels like Backxwash has finally give herself permission to breathe free.

Highlights: “VIBANDA”, “MUZUNGU”, “MUKAZI”

Backxwash’s HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING is available now.

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