Rapper, poet, and abolitionist Noname has dropped a brand new track, “RAINFOREST.” The cover art for the single features a sketch of two black activists, protesting and levitating on top of the roof of a car. They stand defiantly, surrounded by a sea of black revolutionists as the city behind them erupts in flames of smoke.
Noname always seems to be in complete synchronicity with the world and time itself. She releases tracks that confront and expose whatever alarm is currently being sounded off within the system – a system that is innately corrupt and crumbling rapidly.
This larger and broader system in which she is addressing and alluding to in “RAINFOREST” is capitalism itself – like a rainforest, capitalism too is an ecosystem that relies on our presence and contributions in order to survive.
Not only does Noname use the metaphor of a rainforest to address capitalism – she also implements the literal translation of the word to address the urgency of environmentalism.
Noname is an entire ecosystem herself – The knowledge she carries within her is what she offers and extends to her community. Her eyes cannot un-see the interconnectedness of systems of oppression and the way they work in contingent with one another.
Like how capitalism serves to protect racism and racial division is also re-imagined as the foundation of classism… Like how the way Americans took ownership of a land in which they did not own for the sole use of consumption and control. A planet cannot sustain a foundation that wasn’t meant for it to prosper. A world that is being supported by a system that is unstable and broken will inevitably collapse.
Noname is calling for revolutionaries to not only help destroy these systems of oppressions, but to also re-design what will stand in its place.
She sings on the chorus, “How you make excuses for billionaires, you broke on a bus? I need n***** around me rollin’ up and smokin’ me up. Because, because a rainforest cries. Everybody dies a little. I just wanna dance tonight.”
Noname is re-affirming this idea that systems of oppression being the foundation of our country harms not just those that are specifically being targeted – but harms the entirety of our planet and the world in which we occupy.
Sonically, “RAINFOREST” consists mostly of tribal drums and melodic guitar chords as Noname spits effortlessly over it. She made this track as an ode and nod to the revolutionists who refuse to turn a blind eye or to quiet their voice.
