Sundial by Noname Album Review
Go listen to it.
The question of "Who taught you how to love black people?" reverberates throughout the latest album Sundial by Noname. Her work in its varying forms, from rap, being a founder and librarian of Radical Hood Library, and doing political education work through the Noname Book Club, is rooted in what bell hooks call a "love ethic." That ethic of loving black people, as Hooks elaborates on in Salvation: Black People and Love, happens "even when we cannot change ongoing exploitation and domination; love gives life meaning, purpose, and direction."
Noname returns to the world on her terms, uninterested in the pedestal of revolutionary that is used haphazardly on any black artist but with a unwavering Pan-Africanist love ethic, prosperity in mind, and the lightheartedness of an artist who has seen the dead parts of this world and is still choosing to stick around.
On Sundial, Noname finally has the answers to the questions left unanswered on past projects. Her most recent album provides her sharpest bars, her radical aim remains steady on the elite, and her openness to her world of contradiction is frank but needed in a society hellbent on virtue signaling for the sake of it.
The parts of this album that will be made shiny are the name-dropping of black celebrities and billionaires who have never purported to have a black love ethic in the material sense. Those moments of "making it plain," as the black proverb goes, are not nearly as nuanced as the work of community that resonates in the background of Noname's latest release.
Greg Tate would be correct in his labeling of Noname's body of work as "an exercise in our capacity to love and heal each other by digging into our mutual woundedness" That courageousness of spirit that happens on Sundial with tracks such as "balloons," "Afrofuturism" and "oblivion" where Noname's acute refrains of self-love and prowess allude to hooks’ phrasing that building a rooted self and communal esteem "dares us to courageously create the love our children need to be whole, to live fully and well."
"Black Mirror," the album's opening track, begins as a twinkling morning refresher akin to "Brand New Day" from the 1978 musical The Wiz. Spitting back the respites of pessimism, "The state says we dead, we say we not/That's my bitch, I believe my sister," the Chicago-born artist introduces herself anew and takes her time with it. Led by the production of Daoud, the right-hand producer of Saba, another longtime collaborator of Noname's. The bass-heavy track croons into what feels like the rapper in her coolest calm, playing for keeps with nobody but herself. "The witch inside the broom/Motion sick, driftin' in and out of consciousness like the rappers do/ She a rapper too."
The album kicks into full gear on "boomboom," where the powerhouse vocals of Ayoni, a Barbadian songwriter and producer, takes us breathlessly into an uptempo horn and bass medley of affirmations that shake the spirit. "'cause I've been on an island of my own makin'/I've been time travelin', I've been time takin'" Noname meets us after Ayoni's opening verse and chorus with a sticky desire that reminds us of her playful spirit. "Ticky-ticky-boom-boom, all I ever knew/Now he wanna be one of me/Honeybee inside my pot." Ayoni is matched in her efforts by the horn arrangements of Matt Jones and the burgeoning expertise of Gaeten Judd, who plays the parallels of Noname's cool essence with Ayoni's warm, bright sound for a track that earworms into an easy two-step that can hold ranks as one of the strongest songs on the album.
The rowdy single of the album arrives on "Balloons," where the now LA-based artist uses her cool-toned voice to lead us through an airy piano track that illuminates contradictions that live in her and the music industry at large." Niggas are broke for a livin' but pray for riches in death/Niggas under distress/Niggas supposed to finesse, uh." Assisted by legendary and long-standing collaborator Jay Electronica, he pops out with a verse rooted in his undying trust in Islam as he faces the trickery of the industry "In the heart of Knightsbridge, pullin' bunnies out top hats/ Everywhere I step foot I leave a trail of names of the sons of Yakub/ In a trail of flames, I'm on fire/I'm plugged in directly to Messiah" Both wordsmiths shake off the darkness of their worlds with Eryn Allen Kane whirring us to the spaceship of certainty of the chorus with the oracle like production of Saba and Ben Nartey. The track is a necessary middle ground for a project that could leave a listener in other realms.
In all of its clarity, the album gets in its way with tracks like "beauty supply" and "Gospel?" featuring $ilkMoney, billy woods, and Ayoni. Both tracks feel too safe for a project that allows Noname to introduce herself with a new tongue. Both tracks are welcome returns to tones from past works and a reminder of her growth.
A thesis of sorts begins to unfold on "toxic," the album's eighth track that opens with a cynicism about love. "Something that sparkles and so sublime/ Real sinister, white vinegar, clean/ Scrub out the dirt patch where he just hurt me" Rapping over the metronomic jazz synths of Saba's production, we ride along with Noname in what feels like real-time processing of a romantic relationship that ends up a mirror for her own self worth and determination. "I don't need your bad bad/ I can do bad all by my lonely, first homie/ Had a whole baby on me, fuck you, nigga”. The steady repetition of "fuck you nigga” to somehow accept the betrayal of her past relationship seems to move her to say out loud her whispered truths to make them irrelevant to her past desires. "Quiet is kept/kept his ego fed/Quiet is kept/ gave him resources/ And good pussy for love/I'm like his little secret under the rug/Like, I could almost be wifey/ But I ain't light skin enough" The bright realization of noname's ego finally breaks through on the third verse where she echoes what James Baldwin speaks to about the power of love and self-esteem, "love…but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth." The Chicago born artist ends the ballad of radical acceptance in the present tense, "I study time/ Never again in my new, new life, I treat me well"
It is hard to listen to Sundial in the wake of the 50th anniversary of HipHop without thinking about why hip-hop culture was sold to the highest bidder. To think of it as a sound by young people stripped of its radical sound, in the words of dream hampton but is now a commodity that continues to be surveilled, deboned, and made infantile by a system that turns our legends into messengers of our death.
Many purveyors of hip hop would say the expansion of the genre was an assured possibility and is better in the hands of black people. However, the cost of that sale and its resounding jewels of cultural and material power rarely change the well-being of its stars, let alone the disenfranchised people it's made by. The game was fixed before it even began, and the question of what to do with hip-hop's hollow pieces remains unresolved.
That question is not Noname's to answer, consider or sit with. Still, it feels like a small glimmer of possibility to see that after the fall of what Greg Tate calls "Gotham's Black Power movement," black artists can sustain an audience of fans all their own without being at the mercy of the never-ceasing corporate capture of our blues music.
While it is evident that Noname's politics remain the same, the knife of her pen is sharp, and she is finally having fun with her home genre. The deafening reply throughout the album is that the Chicago-born artist learned to love black people by loving herself and her community in real time.
SHEEEESH you ate this!!!
Love everything about this! It felt like an analysis in the best possible way.