I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES - Backxwash
“On this album, Mutinta sinks the blade into the flesh and twists it, amping the aggression factor up a thousand with no hint of mercy or forgiveness in her lyrics.”
From “Best of June 2021”
When Ashanti Mutinta released God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, she shook the world of industrial hip-hop, injecting it with a ferocious and deeply personal rage that would leave the genre’s faithful gasping for more. Mutinta, known professionally as Backxwash, brought us into her world of tortured confusion, taking us on a dynamic journey through her experiences with abuse and subjugation. God Has Nothing… was raw and abrasive, but it ultimately ended with a sentiment of forgiveness, an uneasy reconciliation with the violent circumstances of the world. Her latest project, I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES could not have taken a more drastic U-turn. On this album, Mutinta sinks the blade into the flesh and twists it, amping the aggression factor up a thousand with no hint of mercy or forgiveness in her lyrics. Her words are some of the bleakest I’ve ever heard in hip-hop, stringing together religious trauma, colonization, racism, transphobia, and drug addiction with a series of unsubtle metaphors for suicide. If you’re new to industrial hip-hop, I say with the utmost appreciation and reverence that you might want to start somewhere else.
The album starts with a distorted sample repeating the mantra “a little bit of pain is a good thing,” invoking the Puritanical idea of original sin and struggle. This intro is the low tide before a chain of sonic tidal waves that illustrate the pain that Mutinta has endured at the hands of organized religion as a Black trans woman. In the album’s first full song, “WAIL OF THE BANSHEE,” she screams in the face of an uncaring god, recounting her experiences with self-harm in penetrating detail. Right away, the listener can tell that Mutinta is angrier than before, her rapping having given way to outright screaming and her production having taken on a noisy, mechanical atmosphere. This new character is best demonstrated in the monstrous title track. This song is unbridled vengeance, punctuated by Black Dresses vocalist Ada Rook’s needle-throated screeches on the chorus. Mutinta’s verses take you straight to the Salem witch trials, giving voice to the scent of burning flesh and the fear of God that still permeate the minds of abused Black trans people today. The struggle of holding these identities is further articulated on “TERROR PACKETS,” featuring a lamenting narrative verse from guest rapper CENSORED Dialogue. On the following track, “IN THY HOLY NAME,” Mutinta takes no prisoners. Beginning with a quick nod to the late producer SOPHIE, she takes shot after shot at the rich and powerful who leech off of working people’s labor – Biden, Bezos, Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, and Canada’s own Trudeau. At the halfway point in the album, Mutinta is flipping through a rolodex of charred and distorted images of exploitation and civil unrest, showing no signs of losing momentum.
“At the halfway point in the album, Mutinta is flipping through a rolodex of charred and distorted images of exploitation and civil unrest, showing no signs of losing momentum.”
The second leg of the album contains shorter songs, but packs no less of a punch. “BLOOD IN THE WATER,” “SONG OF SINNERS,” and “666 IN LUXAXA” have a ritualistic cadence to them, highlighting the cultish gloom with which Mutinta speaks about the church and the damage it has done to Black and Indigenous cultures. And with the horrifying recent news of Indigenous children’s remains being found in unmarked mass graves near Canadian churches, Mutinta’s timing in releasing this album is morbidly poignant. “666 IN LUXAXA” is of particular importance, as this song emphatically recounts the horrors of colonization and forced Christianization over a sample of sangoma chanting. The sangoma are traditional healers of Southern Africa, who ritually allow their bodies to become possessed by their ancestors as they practice their medicine. The fact that Mutinta chose this type of chanting as a sample pays homage to her cultural background and underpins her iconoclastic lyrics, elevating her righteous anger from that of an individual to that of an erased ancestral lineage.
The album’s crown jewel is its anguishing closer, “BURN TO ASHES.” Starkly contrasting the mellow musings on her previous album’s closer, “BURN TO ASHES” is a harrowing tribute to Mutinta’s struggle to survive in a world that seems bent on her destruction. Over a gloomily catchy rave beat, Mutinta prognosticates her own death:
“When the time comes, it fades to black, I know where I’m at
I just spark the fumes, boom, and start it as a burn to ash”
She ends the song with a message of vulnerability to her creative director, co-manager, and close friend Chachi Revah.
“[Mutinta’s production] underpins her iconoclastic lyrics, elevating her righteous anger from that of an individual to that of an erased ancestral lineage.”
I can’t say enough about Mutinta’s delightfully grimy production, but one of the album’s other strengths is her methodical attention to its pacing. Although it’s only 33 minutes long, the slow, heavy intensity of this album makes it an absolute slog, like wading through a haunted swamp. Songs like “BLOOD IN THE WATER” and “666 IN LUXAXA” are more brief vignettes than they are full tracks. Not every song has a chorus, but not every song needs one. Mutinta’s restraint creates a project on which every track runs its full course without overstaying its welcome, allowing us to engage more intently with her textured production and tormented lyrics.
After an album as harrowing as God Has Nothing… one would expect that its follow-up would be a little softer around the edges. But Mutinta has perfected the art of regulated discomfort, creating a project so bleak and so chaotic that it honestly makes her previous album look like radio rap by comparison. There’s a nihilistic rawness in her vocal delivery – in almost every song, you can hear her voice cracking, and sometimes you can even hear her crying through the words. These moments of imperfection don’t come off as sloppy, but as profoundly vulnerable despite the cavernous backdrop of each song. I hope this doesn’t create a false dichotomy, but I think of Backxwash as the opposite of clipping., another groundbreaking act, within the industrial hip-hop paradigm. While clipping.’s music never uses the first person in order to create a more immersive atmosphere, Backxwash exclusively uses the first person, which, along with her vulnerable lyrics and intimate performances, reveals to listeners the very painful and personal inspiration for her music. Her fire-and-brimstone temperament gives every song an urgent, apocalyptic edge, in what I interpret as an attempt by Mutinta to create the tension that one feels living day-to-day as a person with her identities.
“This is a hip-hop album that’ll make you feel like you need an exorcism after listening to it.”
This is a hip-hop album that’ll make you feel like you need an exorcism after listening to it. With its demonic themes and ghoulish production, it’s a cauldron of toxic sludge and raw anger. And yet, over the gunshot snares and the swampy synths, Mutinta’s voice reads loud and clear, as if to highlight the importance of expression and vulnerability in an era of so much noise. The metaphysical themes of her last album have been replaced by viscerally human ones – rage, pain, vengeance, depression, etc. – and with this shift comes her most mature, most heart-wrenching, most enrapturing music yet. I don’t know what sort of magic Ashanti Mutinta practices, but this album will leave you feeling absolutely bewitched.
For Fans Of: clipping., Black Dresses, Death Grips, JPEGMAFIA
LISTEN TO: Title Track, “IN THY HOLY NAME,” “666 IN LUXAXA,” “BURN TO ASHES”
