SOUTHPAW by Ivy Sole

With fewer than 25k followers between Twitter and Instagram, odds are that Ivy Sole is one of the best rappers you’ve never heard of. The jazzy, soulful Philadelphia product put out her latest work SOUTHPAW last month.

This project exudes passion at every turn, both in its longing for social justice reform as well as in its lustful romantic endeavors. Sometimes IS laces her lyrics with aggression (SOUTHPAW), and sometimes they’re woven with softly spoken words (“BITTERSWEET,” “NAME IT,” “HEAVY”) but they’re never indifferent.

SOUTHPAW’s two themes quickly become evident – the first is the U.S. failed promise of equality for the black community. SOUTHPAW, the lead track, is music for a revolution, and it carries with it the urgency and frustration of a people who are fed up with waiting peacefully. The following track KISMET opens and closes with narration from James Baldwin - an author and thinker who explored themes of race, sexuality, and class in the 20th century. The track uses IS and lojii in dichotomy and balances the passions of living life, time spent loving and laughing together, and balancing coming from nothing to aspiring to having everything.

BITTERSWEET is a song with illusions to slavery, segregation, and the Motherland. Ultimately, IS wants the good without the bad. She wants what she’s lusted after without reservation. She wants her love passionate, pushing everything off the table to make room for bodies to wrap each other up in love. IS wants freedom without compromise. Black folks have compromised enough.

HEAVY, SOUTHPAW’s final track is a culmination of everything that came ahead of it. It’s jazzy, but it’s relentless and heavy. Relationship is again juxtaposed to the Black struggle for liberation. It’s a song about the restlessness of a nation, and not just for the fear and ugliness of the things we won’t say, but also for the hope that we can be in unity together. That we can share a name.

Ivy Sole is a poet of the highest order. SOUTHPAW is a moving work of art with so much replay value, so much thought provoking material, you’re doing yourself a musical and civic disservice if you don’t listen.