Black women artists rarely get due credit for technical innovation in music making, outside of vocal talent. Aretha Franklin’s keen ear for her melodies made her a fierce arranger who knew exactly where to place the instruments that scaffolded her hits. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s guitar playing combined the sonic waves of Delta blues with the amorphous dissonance of a nascent rock sound. Patrice Rushen is a skilled pianist who can add classical notes to an explosive pop moment. Too often, his ability as instrumentalists, mixers, and sound curators on a deeply intimate, diasporic level is pushed aside, the breadth of his accomplishments matched by the range of his voices. The work of the Sudan Archives resists this flattening at every turn. Brittney Parks, the Ohio native whose 2019 debut athena a vivid introduction to her avant-garde pop, hip-hop, and electronic fantasy, she’s a self-taught multi-instrumentalist with an inescapable audio imprint. On her second album, prom queen natural brown, the singer-songwriter dances with herself at her own party, where she’s also a guest of honor and headlining artist. She’s a one-woman band who, across 18 sprawling tracks, conveys a frenetic energy that’s as emotionally relaxing as it is physically crushing.
“Only bad bitches in my trellis” is the siren song of “Home Maker,” the album’s first track, which turns the communal act of building a farmhouse into a flirtatious reminder that those we keep close talk a lot about how we wish be. perceived. Sudan only hangs out with the best, which makes her as flashy as the baddest person in her corner. She is optimistic and still observant, hyper-aware of the doubts and horrors beyond her door. On “NBPQ (Topless),” her lyrics approach self-fragmentation at a disorienting speed. Sudan is shown to be cynical and sad at the beginning of the song, leaning towards the Toni Morrison style. bluest eye narrative and longing for her body to resemble those most celebrated: “Sometimes I think if I was light-skinned/Then I’d crash every party/Win every Grammy, make the kids happy.” Welding his voice to electronic rhythms joined by sparse violin notes carrying rhythms reminiscent of the Sahel in summer, “NBPQ” sounds like a moodboard, the unstable feel of its instrumentation illustrating an evolution in progress. As his tone shifts in the chorus from despondency to indomitable confidence, so does the rhythm, from tense reverie to forceful syncopation, interspersed with insistent handclaps. When he sings, “I’m not average, I’m not average, I’m not average,” you have no choice but to believe him.
