Kojey Radical - "Water (If Only They Knew)" Ft. Mahalia & Swindle
“Water (If Only They Knew)” Song & Short film (above)
“Water” Song only
“If Only” Song only
~Zumi Underground
This one comes from Kojey Radical, a London-based poet and rapper. Still up and coming and without a full length album - he does have 3 EPs to date.
Stylistically, Kojey can be described as British hip hop on top of afrobeats mixed in with a healthy dose of spoken word. Although he was raised in London, Kojey was the son of Ghanaian immigrants. This bears out in many aspects of his music. He’s emphasised the complicated politics of black identity at home and abroad, the impact of diaspora, to the embrace of one’s ethnicity. Although he’s embraced they style of UK hip hop, he hasn’t been shy about bending it to tell his own story, most famously evidenced by his song Kwame Nkrumah, which he dedicated to the Ghanaian independence movement.
The short film version of “Water” includes the hook and first verse from “If Only” which starts things off hitting hard with cynical bars of sell-outs of the righteous cause with “How much they pay for your silence? | How much of all that money you save | To put on your brother consignment?” This leads perfectly into “Water” where Kojey is jaded by self-serving politicians.
Though Kojey lives in the UK, many of his lyrics suggest a strong spiritual connection to the struggles of black America. On “Water”, he makes an allusion to the Charleston, SC church shooting. “I’m too scared to speak to God / There’s shooters in the churches now.” It’s clear Kojey sees a connection between the political forces that radicalized the white supremacist Charleston shooter and the forces that left Flint Michigan without clean water for years as he continues the song with: “Think there’s something in the water / Tell me what the mission is, I see lead showers / Code word. Flint Michigan.”
In a balanced contrast to Kojey’s gritty vocals, Mahalia’s beautiful voice enters the song describing the limited guidance and resources given to black descendants of slave trade after being taken away from their roots. While Kojey’s voice and lyrics remind me more of a fed up mercenary ready to go into action, the softness of Mahalia’s voice gives me the perspective of the overlooked citizens of the tyranny and the struggles they grapple with between needing those resources, but not being able to trust where they come from as the verse bridges into the chorus of “there’s something in this water”.
There’s a lot more to unpack in these tracks than I can get into in one post, but I encourage y’all to give it a few spins and see what you find in them as well. These are the cuts I could see being added to the Soundtrack of the Revolution and I will definitely be keeping my eye on him.
Kojey Radical on Spotify
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