Album #313: Moor Jewelry – True Opera

• Released: 2020
• Origin: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Label: Don Giovanni
• Best Track: Look Alive

I’ve heard this record is worth a listen. It’s a cross-race and cross-gender collaboration between poet Camae Ayewa and producer Mental Jewelry, neither of whom I know anything about.

The result is a riot though. Hovering between the rap-rock fusion of Rage Against the Machine (‘Look Alive’), the angular post-hardcore of Fugazi (‘Eugenics’) and the straight-up punk confrontation of Bad Brains (‘Le Grand Macabre’), it’s a wonderful half-hour of urban chaos.

Lyrically I can’t make that much of it out, and it seems to be largely drilled by repetition, but the album is raw, aggressive and cathartic. It’s what a collaboration should be for me – two artists not compromising with each other, but complementing and even competing.