georgia ann muldrow’s “blam” is a call to arms

Georgia Anne Muldrow is getting ready for war and she wants you to get your Black self ready too. The singer-songwriter, MC, and producer has delivered a new video for her self-defense anthem “BLAM” from her Grammy-nominated 2018 album Overload.

Muldrow, who helped coin the term “woke,” challenges us to be both aware and prepared on “BLAM!” In light of the escalation of state-sponsored and white supremacist violence against marginalized peoples, Muldrow asks the pointed question, “What ya gonna do when guns go ‘BLAM!’?” She’s resolute in her decision to protect her family and people singing the refrain “‘fore I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.”

The Capricorn Clark-directed video was filmed in Leimert Park, the Los Angeles neighborhood that has long been a hotbed of Black cultural and intellectual activity. taking place across the street from Eso Won Books and right outside of Harun Coffee a new Black-owned neighborhood fixture, the video symbolically brings Black expression together with Black resistance and Black business.