Zambian-Canadian rapper and producer Backxwash will be following up her Polaris Prize-winning album God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It next month with a new record called I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses. This week she has delivered the first cut from the record, the opening title track, which features Ada Rook of Black Dresses.
They say that success makes you soft, but that’s certainly not the case for Backxwash, and “I Lie Here Buried With My Rings And My Dresses” is a towering testament to the fact that she’s just getting started. Fusing grinding guitars with industrial beats, she creates an imposing production, provoking Ada Rook to new levels of horror as she gargles on skeletons in her rasping hook: “Empty, alone, waiting / Everything that didn’t kill me.” Backxwash erupts into the song like a demon surfacing out of cold dry earth, delivering her lines like each syllable is noxious gas she must expel. “I see the, the Lord has witnessed / The many swords in my ribcage / Just when I needed him most / I get left ignored, it’s ridiculous / I see no thing as justice / The world is run by the wicked,” she raps purposefully in the second verse, just one example of the earthquaking determination she injects into every line. She sounds like someone on a mission to set the record straight, to bring equality to the Earth – even if that means burning it all down to ash and starting again.
Backxwash’s new album I LIE HERE WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES arrives on June 20 via Ugly Hag Records. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
