interview: afrofuturist rapper sammus on bringing blackness into new spaces

While the music industry doesn’t always validate the accomplishments of Black women, Congolese-Ivorian American rapper and producer Sammus doesn’t see the sky as the limit. She strives to bring Black womanhood to a new frontier in her debut LP Pieces in Space.

By Crystal Kayiza, AFROPUNK contributor

How do you position yourself in the diaspora and how do your Congolese and Ivorian roots influence your music?
Growing up in little Ithaca, New York you know I had a lot of identity crises surrounding my blackness and my Africanness.

I didn’t know how to interact with my Africanness and I think I overlooked it for a long time. If you listen to any of my old music it’s not something that I talked about very seriously until maybe my last album where I started to try and call that out of myself. It’s been a part of my identity that I’ve never really been very good at articulating. I felt like, for the most part, I was doing a bad job as an African kid.

When was the last time you went to DRC or Ivory Coast?
In 2015 I was invited to the Congo International Film Festival in Goma and it was so good. For three months after that I just cried every time I talked about it. I ended up performing in front of thousands of people. I had never been to the Congo before.

It was all love. I haven’t been able to replicate that experience since.

Last fall you released your debut LP, Pieces in Space. What were the new things you wanted to bring to this project?
With this album a lot of it was structured around telling stories from my perspective. In lots of my other projects I was speaking to more broad topics. I wanted to address misogynoir; I wanted to address racism in America. The main objective for me through this project was to develop a voice. A thing that people could say, “oh that’s Sammus”, and have that be crystal clear. I didn’t feel like I had a really crystallized identity in my other work.

Your music is often described as nerdcore hip-hop. Do you identify with Afrofuturism?
As a way to claim my identity, that’s when I starting using the term Afrofuturism. I feel like nerdcore is this umbrella term for hip-hop that engages with specific fandoms and geek culture but it doesn’t quite get at what I’m trying to talk about—which is projecting blackness into new spaces. To me that’s at the heart of Afrofuturism. How do we put blackness in places that it was never imagined—whether that’s in outer space, side parallel universes, video games or comic books.

We’ve seen more visibility for Black women in this area, with the recent release of Hidden Figures and in the comic book world with stories like Black Panther: World of Wakanda. Who are the women that you draw inspiration from?
I’m so grateful to my Mom for making sure that I saw amazing Black women. I remember her bringing me to see Mae Jemison speak when I was kid. She’s really an inspiration for me, just in terms of thinking about putting us in different spaces. She really is like, what can we do to get off this planet and explore other places for humans to live in the galaxy. I just love and appreciate and respect her so much for the work that she’s done and for being a pioneer.

There’s a lot of conversation in this political climate about whose burden it is to educate folks. How do you balance the need to be honest in your music but also not feel pressured to have to constantly confront issues?
In terms of the album itself, I think it kind of happened organically. I don’t think I went into it like, I want X amount of songs to talk explicitly about racism and sexism and I want X amount of songs to talk about the stuff I watch on T.V.
I’ll talk about my hair and to me that’s me talking about race. That too is political. Talking about getting my twists done, and in the next line talking about Sonic the Hedgehog and showing that those things can be part of the same person, is where a lot of the politics comes out.

One of the most impactful songs on your album is your track ‘Qualified’. It speaks to a lot of important issues that Black women aren’t given the space to speak about openly. How and when did you decide you were going to put it on the album?
I released a track called 1080p that’s about mental health issues. That kind of primed me for recognizing the power of being vulnerable and how necessary it is for people in the African Diaspora, for Black women, to be able to say I’m scared, I don’t know, I don’t have an answer for this. That’s actually incredibly freeing.

I’ve talked to a lot of folks about the weird relationship that first-generation kids have with a need for validation that is out of control. I think ‘Qualified’ speaks to the longing and urgent need to hear you’re good enough, you’re supposed to be here. I’m singing the chorus to nobody in particular because I’m not going to get it back.

I want to turn to your Keep Fighting tour. Why did you choose ‘Keep Fighting’?
It was really for myself, remembering that going on tour, that continuing the push artistically and creatively is important work that needs to be done. I hope that it serves as a reminder for other folks that they can keep fighting in the places that they’re at. For me it really is a reminder that just being places is a radical act.

You’ll also be stopping at SXSW.
This is my first year not performing as part of the official nerdcore showcase but as part of Don Giovanni Records. For me it’s pretty exciting to make a shift from a little more niche space to performing with other people on my label. I’ve had a few other cool, unofficial and official, showcase offers.

Then conversations around the wording of the contract emerged and a number of folks that I respect and personally look up to drafted this letter to reach out to SXSW to say that this wording around the deportation of international artists who do unofficial shows is absolutely unacceptable. In this current climate it’s fear mongering. Don Giovanni Records has issued a few statements as well. So the hope is that this wording will be removed from the contract and that we’ll be able to move forward and perform…This whole controversy unfolding has made me more cognizant of who I affiliate myself with. On March 7, 2017 SXSW agreed to remove language notifying performers that U.S. immigration could be contacted over contract violations. Shortly after, Sammus’ label, Don Giovanni Records, announced that their official SXSW showcase will go on.

Any upcoming projects that we should be on the lookout for?

I’ll say that I’m working on a joint EP with a friend.

And hopefully more engagement with what it means for me to be first-generation. I feel like with every project I talk a little bit more about it but I don’t feel like I’ve said what I needed to say about my complicated relationship with that.

*Update* Then conversations around the wording of the contract emerged and a number of folks that I respect and personally look up to drafted this letter to reach out to SXSW to say that this wording around the deportation of international artists who do unofficial shows is absolutely unacceptable. In this current climate it’s fear mongering. Don Giovanni Records has issued a few statements as well. So the hope is that this wording will be removed from the contract and that we’ll be able to move forward and perform…This whole controversy unfolding has made me more cognizant of who I affiliate myself with.

On March 7, 2017 SXSW agreed to remove language notifying performers that U.S. immigration could be contacted over contract violations. Shortly after, Sammus’ label, Don Giovanni Records, announced that their official SXSW showcase will go on.
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