Album Notes

In the space that hip-hop has carved within mass culture it is rare for participants in the expression to be artists. Neo-expressionist Basquiat helped aerosol scribes secure authenticity beyond their immediate community of consequence, but when it comes to the remaining three pillars of the genre – break dancing, DJing and MCing – there are gaps in artistic respectability. The voice of hip-hop is particularly crippled. Too often the most earnest and lyrically dexterous “rappers” are thin personalities; action figures for B-boys and want-to-B-boys who bend and twist typical tales of hyper swagger to fit stereotypical representations of the Black American male – most notably the thug, the hypersexual, the coon, the athlete. A bit of swagger is understandable. This is an imperative of hip-hop, ego work done to psychologically buffer against a larger society that tends to relegate Black males as pathological and deficient. Nonetheless, artistic balance helps to move culture forward. It provides arteries toward progressing experience, expression, thought and action.

Sekani Williams – with this long play – helps to move culture forward.

Of course, it would be folly to suggest tabula rasa with respect to artistic hip-hop lyricism. Icons like Rakim and Nas, De La’s Posdnuous and Plug Two, André 3000, Common and few others have contributed to the cannon. This is where comparisons help to contextualize Sekani. A Queens-bred/Baltimore-based MC who thinks before he puts voice to record is beyond himself. Still able to engage in the rudiments of the innovative paring of words, concepts, and phrasings to paint a picture of his infinite dopeness, Sekani more importantly pushes to the everyday allowing for hope and promise and love and despair and work and worry and transcendence in the mind’s eye of his listener. This is what defines him.

Sekani is normal. And in the reveal of his normalcy, through the art of his music, he allows for a type of engagement that is authentic. It is not a call and response based on how much money you have in the bank, or a validation of your drug habit, or how well you do with sex exploits. Sekani builds a relationship on the real, on a soul expression like Coltrane shared with us, and Aretha and Donny. Sekani’s music is informed by the hard blocks of Queens and Baltimore, but is also a product of his father’s paintings and working with kids at the local YMCA. This simple yet infinitely complex representation of self combines with intelligence, thoughtfulness, tremendous lyrical acumen and production to make Sekani an artist. This album is a testament to his work and is an indication of hip-hop’s ability to progress experience, expression, thought and action – its ability to be art.


David Wall Rice, PhD
Morehouse College
Atlanta Georgia