Backxwash’s Ashanti Mutinta returns with a morbid, bleak and brilliant post-trilogy album.
Between 2020 and 2022, Zambian-born, Montreal-based rapper Backxwash – real name Ashanti Mutinta – released three stunning albums, all with equally arresting titles. It started with God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, which won Canada’s esteemed Polaris Prize. Then came I Lie Here Buried With My Rings And My Dresses, followed by His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering. A conceptual trilogy that explored her heritage, queerness, identity and faith, the records were as much inspired by both hip-hop and traditional African music as they were by Black Sabbath and horror movies.
As its title suggests, Only Dust Remains – the beginning of Backxwash’s post-trilogy era – is a dark album. A very dark album. The first song, Black Lazarus, is an unflinching (and unflinchingly self-aware) look at suicidal ideation that invokes George Michael and Michael Jackson while picking Frank Ocean as a soundtrack for reaching oblivion. ‘What would happen if I went like George or Michael?’ they ask as an angelic but portentous choir adds dramatic weight to her words. ‘Sorry, baby, I was late to your recital / Novacane, serenade me so delightful.’ In the next verse, however, her viewpoint expands outwards beyond her own mental health. ‘Why the fuck am I complaining here?’ they spit, ‘when there’s kids in Gaza with a missing father?’
It's not the only time that conflict between personal and widespread, more universal, pain rears its head. Underpinning the entire record is the generational trauma of Black history, but it’s intertwined and exacerbated by her own personal struggles and the terrible state of the world. Wake Up is an incredibly powerful, almost constant crescendo of desperate misery and self-annihilation, while History Of Violence evokes Ashanti’s personal past as they once again ruminate on their depression and desire to end it all in the context of the current political landscape.
‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free / Thinking about all the people dead in the street / How young was this kid, like 11 or 3?’ The song then transforms into a biting Marxist critique of capitalist power structures, imperialism and the military-industrial complex: ‘And these fuckers gonna say it’s all about peace / Check the stats motherfucker it’s all about greed.’
Only Dust Remains is a brave, powerful and uncompromising album that holds nothing back, either in terms of Ashanti’s own life, or her views about what’s happening outside it. Yet bleak and dark as it is, there’s nevertheless hope to be found here. DISSOCIATION blends post-rock with hip-hop and shimmers with an incredible beauty, while Stairway To Heaven is a mesmerising moment of existential contemplation. It’s not a Led Zeppelin cover, and actually samples Anna von Hausswolff’s Epitaph Of Daniel, but exists in the same plane.
Indeed, although the overt rock and metal references have been turned down on this album, you’ll be hard pressed to hear a soul-crushingly heavy and devastating record this year.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: Anna von Hausswolff, FEVER 333, JPEGMAFIA
Only Dust Remains is released on March 28
