E L U C I D // Joy James

sample starts at 1:44:26, but the context for it begins around 1:43:12

The Joy James sample which begins the track “Spellling” is overlayed with ELUCID delivering the last sentence to the Amiri Baraka poem “Jitterbugs”.

The Relationship between Jame's words and the notion of the star being unsafe: In the original poem, Baraka says "this star” which speaks directly to planet Earth itself, but in ELUCID saying “the star”, the word “star” can also been seen as a destination, as the destination. It can be understood as a place, the space in which you, your community has found some semblance of peace, of stability. You’ve arrived. You’ve achieved that which at one point may have seemed impossible, but now even that too is rendered unsafe—THEY’VE MADE THE STAR UNSAFE.

And what follows from that is the hook:

JUST GOT TO HEAVEN AND I CAN’T SIT DOWN.

This speaks to the precarity of black life and what stands in front us in regards to the way towards liberation. But as Joy James so eloquently states “it’s an impossible task, but it one that is completely worthy of [us]”