REVIEW | BLXCK PRIDE BY QUEENS EDITION

By Faizah Cyanide • On Reviews

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 29th 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

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this artform.

About Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clinical research by profession and has been an avid Hip Hop lover since the early 90's, having created her own Hip Hop event, 'Breakin' Boundaries' in the early 2000's which was predominantly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with several international events promoters and dancers to inspire others through this artform.