REVIEW | BLXCK PRIDE BY QUEENS EDITION

I was excited to come across this all female hip hop group — Queens Edi­tion and hear their debut single – BLXCK PRIDE, which was released on 29^th November.

The form­a­tion of this group was com­pletely serendip­it­ous as it was dis­covered that this col­lect­ive of six indi­vidu­ally tal­en­ted female MC’s in their own right had great energy togeth­er. The very notion of this had me intrigued. Listen­ing to this track, I felt trans­por­ted back to an era of hip hop where ori­gin­al­ity was a must and not a rar­ity. It reminded me of the days in which a track would fea­ture vari­ous tal­en­ted MC’s and you would wait to see who was on the next verse and how they would slay the same beat dif­fer­ently. I enjoyed the vary­ing flows and deliv­ery of each verse by a dif­fer­ent MC over an enga­ging beat, I was spoilt for choice by styles. The beat itself is sampled from the Lover’s Rock ‘Black Pride’ by Kofi and pro­duced by the UK’s very own Nutty P who has worked with the likes of Rod­ney P and Wretch 32 so it was pretty catchy.

These MC’s Coco 7, Dee Lush, Zara Sykes, Kee­sha Simpson, Min Ranger & Shar­naCane do an excel­lent job in rep­res­ent­ing females with intel­li­gence and skills, without hav­ing to reduce them­selves to hyper­sexu­al­ity to attract atten­tion or sales, it’s refresh­ing. Their skills speak for them­selves and demand respect. It’s not­able that this track is radio friendly and proves that you can be a rap artist with sub­stance, and still go hard without vul­gar­ity and remain authen­t­ic to the art­form. Hope­fully this will help them get exposure.

This single BLACK PRIDE paints a pos­it­ive image of the black female and chal­lenges the ste­reo­type of the black woman, ‘we ain’t all just out doing crime’. Full of power­ful mes­sages its empower­ing. It fills you with a sense of pride in belong­ing to an eth­nic minor­ity, but at the same time it’s inclus­ive. It’s a cel­eb­ra­tion of black cul­ture, more spe­cific­ally black women or ‘Queens’, from a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive and every­one is wel­come to join in on the sound.

A diverse and tal­en­ted group, full of good vibes. I look for­ward to the full album — The BLXCK Playl­ist on Club FRSHRZ. I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing new music from these ladies in the new year!

Check them out!

Offi­cial Music Video

 

The BLXCK Playlist

Ins­tagram

Twit­ter