Album Review: Moor Mother – Black Encyclopedia of the Air

“Beat soup” that’s hard to digest

Blk girl blues. Coffee shop riot gurl. Black ghost songs. These are just few of the descriptors Camae Ayewa—better known as Moor Mother—uses to refer to her uncompromising brand of experimental music. One senses a bit of irony in these terms, a tongue-in-cheek reference to her unclassifiability and to the absurdity of genre distinctions as a whole. With everything from a noise-punk record to theatre piece under her belt, Moor Mother is tough to pin down. But in a surprising turn of events, she declared her latest record, Black Encyclopedia of the Air, her most accessible work to date, even expressing fear that she made a “Disney album.” 

Good one, Moor Mother. 

Deep down, she seems to recognize this isn’t the case. In a press release, she warns that Black Encyclopedia of the Air “drop kicks your ‘chill beats to study to’ Youtube playlist and hyper-intellectual rap podcasts into a hadron collider.” Describing her album in opposition to a “chill beats to study to” Youtube playlist—the pinnacle of accessibility—while also calling it a “Disney album” seems like a bit of a contradiction, doesn’t it? “Accessibility” is relative. At the end of the day, this record is plenty experimental, and Moor Mother knows it. 

Granted, the instrumental backdrops on Black Encyclopedia of the Air certainly dabble in accessibility, with warbling, jazz-inflected pianos (“Mangrove”) and murky, stoned textures—hell, “Vera Hall” is practically a cloud rap song. But they still retain an experimental edge, also utilizing arcane field recordings (“Clock Fight”) and piercing feedback (“Iso Fonk”). The whole thing takes on a swirly, watery sound that does justice to Moor Mother’s description of the album as “beat soup.”

But things really get strange on a formal level, where Moor Mother is as challenging as ever. Most of these tracks barely reach the two-minute mark, with righteous political rage and Afrofuturist esoterica spat at a rapid-fire pace, leaving people little time to catch up. Before one can even register what they just heard, they’re whisked into the next piece. Turns out beat soup is hard to digest, and Moor Mother refuses to hold people’s hand along the way. 

So, if it isn’t already clear, this is not an album that can be enjoyed casually. Save for one or two tracks, it isn’t the least bit versatile. This isn’t a complaint, just a reminder to not take Moor Mother’s label of “accessibility” too seriously— this project demands careful, repeated engagement. There’s so much thrown at people at once that only the punchiest lines will stick out and leave an imprint upon first listen, from “No more master’s clock/ We travel space waves,” a cosmic expression of black empowerment off “Zami,” to the visceral “Guts of slavery/ Grits and gravy/ Shackled babies” off “Race Function Limited.” 

Then, there are the subtler punchlines and bits of wordplay that aren’t fully appreciated until listen two or three—like on “Vera Hall,” when Moor Mother raps, “Existing before that/ Before Europeans had apples/ Damn, this land has snakes,” with an assured flow that oozes out like molasses. 

Admittedly, the record’s high-speed formal attack can be frustrating at times, with “Obsidian,” featuring Pink Siifu, being the most damning example. Pink Siifu takes full command of the track with his slinking, menacing rasp, so when his verse is through in just 42 seconds, and the track comes to an abrupt finish, it’s hard not to feel dissatisfied. It also drags at times, especially toward the end on tracks like “Tarot” and “Nighthawk Of Time,” which are conceptually bold but musically underwhelming. 

“Made A Circle” is perhaps the best and most straightforward track. It provides the clearest articulation of the album’s central concept, as Moor Mother and a host of guests explore collective memory, familial bonds and the cyclical nature of life. “We’re no different from them,” one of the rappers says of her progenitors, “their spirit is ours.” 

Despite the occasional lull, Black Encyclopedia of the Air manages to be both demanding and enjoyable. It feels more like a series of fragments than a collection of songs, but it’s entertaining to sift through those fragments and try making sense of them. Plus, it all amounts to a sort of gestalt effect by the album’s end. Moor Mother’s assertion that this record is “accessible” is laughable—because the sounds and stories within are no laughing matter.