Sustainable Fridays: It’s Been A HOT Minute…

"What would it mean to consider black aliveness, especially given how readily—and literally—blackness is indexed to death?" ~Kevin Quashie, Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being.

It’s been a hot minute since I last curated a Black environmental playlist in 2018. In that minute, so much has happened. I won’t recap all the collective traumatic events we have lived and are currently living through. I know that we all could use a bit of joy—a bit of a pause as we endure many systems that do not prioritize our well-being, lives, or sustenance.

DMX’s “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” album title comes to mind quite often these days. This phrase is in tradition of many Black artists who use religious imagery in their music, but the heat and the darkness stand out to me. Where I’m from (WEST SIDE! of Chicago), heat can mean many things: over policing, violence, and more.  And, nobody would win when our block was hot. Collectively, we are in dark times… The block is hot… The world is hot.  Quite literally, the year 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, according to climate scientists. I point to the nuances and metaphorical uses of heat in discussion with climate change, because communities of color often disproportionately feel the burden of heat—well before that heat is a mainstream concern. This nuance is often not accounted for when discussing threats of climate change, which isolates and excludes communities of color long impacted by many systems of oppression.  

Music is a window into current boiling points… Imma push back a bit on the criticisms about rap and hip hop that I have seen, especially as we've celebrated hip hop’s 50th anniversary the past year. Some of rap's most criticized forms like Chicago drill, have been used by artists like OneFour in Australia to speak to issues in their communities that they wouldn’t have been able to express otherwise. I have critiques too, but I’m EXCITED about the current landscape of hip hop and its position to speak to and spark conversations toward solving some of our most pressing issues. Hip hop has the ability to put frontline communities in the forefront in climate change discussions and more.

The Sustainable Fridays list that I have curated largely includes Black artists that are asking questions about water, displacement, home, forest fires, the genocide in Palestine, and more. The rhymes and melodic offerings in the playlist are full of life, expressions of joy, hopes, and imaginings of an otherwise. 

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