In music, as with most art forms, location is integral to the genesis of new genres and ideas, sharing new creations and developing new artistic avenues. This is particularly true for hip-hop music. Hip-hop began on the streets of the Bronx in the early 1970s. As a cultural expression of the burrough’s African, Caribbean and Latino Americans, its flourishing was based around several key arts: break dancing, graffiti, MCing, DJing and arguably — as proposed by artists like the “godfather” of hip-hop, Afrika Bambaataa — a fifth art called knowledge. MCing and DJing have morphed into most of what we know today as hip-hop: rapping; musical production; hyping the crowd; elements of cultural commentary, lived experience and storytelling; and other cultural elements like clothing, style and image. The fifth element, knowledge, though disputed as a fundamental facet of the art among some hip-hop scholars and listeners, is present in the newest work by Minnesota artist Dessa, who engages it on multiple levels and ultimately elevates it.
Dessa, born Margaret Wander, was one of the last two original members to join the nine-member Minnesota hip-hop collective Doomtree. She has enjoyed a successful career with the collective since joining in 2005 as a solo artist, through poetry and fiction writing, guest and keynote speaking, and local musical education outreach. Defining a precise Minnesota sound may be futile, but based on growing up in the state and listening to artists like Prince, Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Desdemona and Doomtree, the Minnesota hip-hop sound seems to contain a few key elements. It at least includes lived experience and storytelling, tight and contextualized music production, an edge of indie-production and, more than anything, flow that rivals the most articulate and word-savvy artists out there. Dessa’s recent EP, IDES, exhibits many elements of this sound, resulting in a tight and overall successful album.
IDES comprises seven tracks, the first six of which were released on the 15th of each month from January 2021 to the following June — the Ides of March, the Roman day for settling debts, occurs yearly on the 15th of the month. The seventh and final track, “LYTP,” was released November 15, 2021, and includes a remix in the final EP release. Through releasing IDES as a monthly installment, Dessa has negotiated an increasingly prevalent issue: the promotion of streaming services based on number of streams or views, especially of singles. This has led some artists to focus less on the overall flow and structure of a full album and choose instead to promote singles. With IDES, Dessa has allowed each track to have its own release, giving each its own time and space while still functioning together as a full EP. Some tracks take on the role of a single, while others successfully work to bridge songs and tie the EP together.
Two of the most notable elements of this EP present themselves with full force from the opening of the first track, “Rome”: the crisp and clean production of the album and Dessa’s flow. Though there are many nuanced ideas about flow, it is basically the rhythm, articulation and unique style of a rapping voice. In “Rome,” Dessa pulls no punches while displaying that her flow and wordplay stand with the best. She raps, “Chekhov says you got a gun, you gotta use it / Guess they’re reading Chekhov downtown, in their cruisers,” dropping the listener right into the thick of important social commentary. In every track of IDES, the beats and various melodic material never get in the way of Dessa’s voice, something that some hip-hop artists struggle with. Each track’s production team comprises some combination of Andy Thompson, Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, Michael Piroli and Dessa.
“Bombs Away” and “Life on Land,” the second and third tracks, are a departure from the opening. These both ride at a slower tempo, evoke nostalgia and are heartachingly beautiful. Rather than a focus on social commentary, these two tracks draw especially on Dessa’s creative writing talents. “This song started as a simple keyboard line,” she writes about “Life on Land” on her personal website. “There was a woman who had exhausted both her luck and her company. The details were blurry, but she was in a decadent setting, a casino, maybe — proximity to pleasure. And even while commiserating half-heartedly with a companion, she was occasionally whisked out of her own world, as she had been many times before, to a calmer, alien place far away from the flashing lights and traffic of the human scene.” The music and lyrics come together especially well here to tell a reflective, melancholic story. This duo of tracks also functions extremely well as a bridge to the fourth track.
Named for the iconic NPR journalist and interviewer, Dessa’s fourth track, “Terry Gross,” (“I can see, you take your influences wichoo, everywhere you go / Mine were Carmen Sandiego, Lauryn Hill and Terry Gross”) brings the listener back to the movement and flow of the first song. Here the soundscape is marked with rather sparse but meticulous and interesting trap and bass drum accents. The fifth track, “Talking Business,” gives us an insane display of wordplay based around a wild relationship; real or imagined, the imagery is explicit and evocative: “Facedown on the bedspread, color nearly half-dead / Still recognizable as a regular guest / Missing wallet, missing watch / Something in his tumbler probably stronger than the double scotch.”
At this point in the full album, the drum beats and sparse soundscapes of the more flow-driven tracks become a bit repetitive. However, the penultimate sixth track, “I Already Like You,” opens with a brief but gripping synth keyboard riff before launching into a refreshing and driving groove that pushes through the rest of the song. With a renewed push through the end of the EP, Dessa’s words summarize the track nearly perfectly. “It’s been a long year, man,” she says. “Never wrote one before, but 2021 called for a sexy summer driving song. Windows down, volume up, and maybe a wave for the cute driver one lane over.” This sets up the final track, “LYTP,” which was released five months after “I Already Like You.” This track is a wonderful encapsulation of everything that came before. It has complex wordplay, a beautiful soundscape and a chorus that is crushing: “It looks like she loved you to pieces / But time is on nobody’s side.”
With a play time of just over 21 minutes, IDES runs the gamut of excellent modern hip-hop, engaging complex flow, unbelievable writing and wordplay, production that stands up to the best out there and a range of emotions expressing anger, frustration, serenity, beauty, love and heartbreak. As concepts, a distinct Minnesota sound or a concrete understanding of the knowledge in hip-hop are so ethereal. Yet to listen to Dessa’s IDES is to get a glimpse of this sound and knowledge. This is an album that deserves recognition and will long be on my own playlists. To read more about and listen to the album, see photos of Dessa and her work, watch the official music videos and peruse her creative writing, go to www.dessawander.com.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING:
Doomtree, All Hands (2015)
Dessa, Parts of Speech (2013)
Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)
Atmosphere, God Loves Ugly (2002)
