Blimes Brixton is a hip hop artist from the Bay Area, California. Her debut album under the Blimes Brixton moniker was Castles, released in 2019 on her own all-female record label, Peach House, and her most recent album with musical partner Gifted Gab is out now! Talk About It includes hit singles Magic, Shelly's & Hot Damn feat. Wu Tang's one & only Method Man. Blimes started her music career as a battle rapper and has now progressed into a fully-fledged artist with a backlog of hits, cementing a name for herself in hip hop. She is an incredible lyricist with the biggest heart and toughest work ethic I know. We talk about Blimes' conflict between battle rap (which heavily relies on insulting your opponent) vs her warm-natured, empathetic personality, learning to stand up for yourself both personally and professionally, and the call from Method Man that changed her life just as she was considering quitting music.
Listen to Talk About It by Blimes & Gab on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7MGeQ8aDEq0OHPpIxykQtZ?si=OeLMsQqaRh-OxGF3KuK3wg
Blimes Brixton on social media:
@blimesbrixton / @blimesandgab
BLM petitions that still need signing:
https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-mandatory-life-sentence-for-police-brutality
https://www.change.org/p/govia-thameslink-justice-for-belly-mujinga-justiceforbellymujinga
https://www.change.org/p/andy-beshear-justice-for-breonna-taylor
https://www.change.org/p/prefeitura-do-rio-de-janeiro-justice-for-joāo-pedro
https://www.change.org/p/alabama-governor-kay-ivey-willie-simmons-has-served-38-years-for-a-9-robbery
https://www.change.org/p/us-senate-hands-up-act
https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-investigate-the-killing-of-tamir-rice
https://www.change.org/p/texas-governor-i-want-sandra-bland-s-case-reopened
https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-police-accountability-act-of-2020
https://www.change.org/p/united-states-supreme-court-justice-for-kendrick-johnson
https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-regis-korchinski-paquet
https://www.change.org/p/it-s-never-your-fault-raise-the-age-of-consent-in-nigeria-from-11-to-18
Black literature:
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“The only reason you say that race is not an issue is because you wish it was not,” says Ifemelu, the protagonist of Adichie’s 2013 novel, an engrossing story and sharp-eyed look at the non-American black experience in the United States, in Adichie’s native Nigeria, and beyond.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander
Alexander is an American civil rights lawyer and legal scholar; in her ground-breaking book she analyses the rebirth of a race-based caste in the United States: millions of Americans are locked behind bars and relegated to second-class citizenship by the criminal justice system. Devastating.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
First published in 1963, Baldwin’s book was a bestseller in its day and is just as necessary now – alas. Taking the form of two essays, one a letter to his then 14-year-old nephew, Baldwin’s voice is as powerful and influential as it ever was in looking at systemic racism in the United States.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Gal-Dem called this debut “the black British bible”. It began with a 2014 blog post addressed to those who refused to recognise the structural racism of British society, to those who “truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal.” It’s a dramatic recognition of what she calls “white denial”.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, Evaristo’s novel follows the lives of a dozen British people, predominantly female, predominantly black. The different storylines of the characters – who range in age from 19 to 93 – are engrossing and empathetic, portraits of struggle, imagination and perseverance.
Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch
Hirsch is the daughter of a black Ghanaian woman and a white English man; her book is part memoir, part history, part polemic, an interrogation of her own identity and an examination of the roots of prejudice, taking to task those progressives who claim they “don’t see colour”.
Barracoon: The Story of the ‘Last Black Cargo’ by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston is best known for her novel Their Eyes were Watching God, first published in 1937. She was an anthropologist as well as a novelist: Barracoon is the fruit of Hurston’s interviews with Cudjo Lewis, née Oluale Kossola, the last survivor of the Atlantic slave trade. Hurston couldn’t get it published in her lifetime; it first appeared in print in 2018.
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
“Part documentary, part lyric procedural,” wrote Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker of this book-length poem which won the 2014 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Poetry. Haunting, personal, closely-observed, Rankine brings contemporary American racial politics into tight focus. “Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying."
The Good Immigrant ed. Nikesh Shukla
These 21 essays by black, Asian and minority ethnic writers comprise “a document of what it means to be a person of colour” in Britain today, writes Shukla. Published by Unbound, the crowdfunded website, the book received a huge boost with a £5,000 donation by J. K. Rowling; a companion volume for American writers was published to great acclaim last year. There is a terrific diversity of voices and experiences in both.
Write Bloody UK news:
Pre-order Ollie O Neill's debut full-length poetry collection here! First 100 copies sold with a 10% discount. Out in Autumn.
writebloodyuk.co.uk
Instagram & Twitter: @writebloodyuk
Ollie O' Neill:
Instragram: @ollieoneill
Twitter: @olliecmoneill
Link to Aliza Einhorn's Little Book of Saturn
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Book-Saturn-Astrological-Challenges/dp/1578636280
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