DESCRIPTION
On his album NEGRO DELUXE Siifu trades in soulful rap for punk, fueled by the Black experience in America followed by spiritual jazz and poetry. A beautiful chaotic collage of sounds that reflect the black man’s thoughts on the day-to-day. It doesn’t take long to reach the heart of NEGRO, Pink Siifu’s new album. It’s an aggressive collection of hardcore punk and free jazz, with bold lyrics that encourage shooting back at trigger-happy law enforcement. This album profoundly communicated the anger of an African-American community beset by police violence a month before the murder of George Floyd lit the streets on fire. In April 2021, he revisited the project with NEGRO DELUXE, which doubled the length of the original.
Pink Siifu tells Bomb Magazine “after we were done mastering and mixing, Zeroh was like, “Yo, NEGRO is like fire, and NEGRO DELUXE is like smoke….So I would characterize NEGRO DELUXE as, like, after you’re angry, after you’ve punched a wall, after you beat somebody up, whatever, how do I channel that into something else? How do I just let it go? I feel like NEGRO DELUXE is that, for real, in a nutshell. It’s like the chaos calmed down after all the fire’s gone and the smoke is in the air.”
It isn’t anything like ensley, Siifu’s breakthrough 2018 LP. Where that record used mid-tempo soul and hip-hop to score his upbringing, NEGRO is a riotous mix calling for Black revolution. It’s also the most fearless project in his growing discography. NEGRO harkens back to 1992, to Ice-T’s thrash metal band Body Count, song “Cop Killer”.
This album is meant to remind us of Rodney King, Racist Cops, The Black Panther Party, and Christopher Dorner, the ex-L.A. police officer who, in 2013, went on a violent shooting spree against his former colleagues and their family members due to seeing his own policeman violate the people there supposed to be protecting. “It’s about America, It’s about the trauma that comes from the flag. It’s about understanding that it’s okay to be angry.”
In the album, originally titled ‘To Be Angry’, Siifu started crafting NEGRO after listening to old Afrocentric jazz and watching clips of novelist and poet Amiri Baraka and civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael, reading Sun Ra’s sci-fi poetry book, The Planet Is Doomed, and started studying Bad Brains, June Tyson, Death, Ras G, and many others.
TRACKLIST
BLACKisGod,A ghetto-sci-fi tribute(_G)
SMD
FK
we need mo color.
BLACK!
Adam x Jalen, eye luv u.
ameriKKKa, try no pork.
run pig run.
DEADMEAT
myheartHURT.
Chris Dorner.
Nation Tyme.
homicide/genocide/ill die
bebe's kids, APOLLO
dirt
faceless wings,BLACK!
blackest LOVE, like paint on tha wall
steal from the ENEMY
ON FIRE, PRAY!
Black Be Tha God, NEGRO.
BLACKISINFINITE BLACK ALIVE! spirit shop (understanding)
NEGRO FRIDAY
BLACKZ
heavy
blackSPACE
stratosphere status
BREATHE.birth
G tribute live rehearsal /ALL MY NXGGAS GONE PROSPER rehearsal live
FKOFFME
2dirt
cointail
fkthapolice[slumvillage tribute]
wakeupnPROSPER
Numbers on yo head ft billy woods
tha embrace narrated by Akeema Zane
WBLBDLNITM : PRAY rehearsal
Nation Tyme rehearsal live
NATION TYME PSA
wrkouts2Jazzselfdefensealso
BLACKBETHAGOD!!!!!!!(culture,freedom.cipher), PSA 4 tha FOLKS