Medusah Black Fights the Revolution One Track at a Time

“I feel like it’s always been hip hop’s nature to speak out and create alternative space for people who are suffering at the hands of policies or from a lack of education,” says Anjel Newmann, or Medusah Black as she’s known when she’s got a mic in hand. “Hip hop’s responsibility is to advocate for people, especially young people, who have been traditionally silenced by institutions.”

We’re on the second floor of AS220 as she tells me this. Teenagers are buzzing around on the other side of the door. These are the young people she’s talking about. As the director of AS220 Youth, in addition to being an emcee, theirs are the voices she hopes to inspire.

She herself had gone through the AS220 Youth program starting when she was 13. She recalls using rap, graffiti and dance to make statements about big tobacco and other corporations who were appropriating hip hop culture in order to sell harmful products and lifestyles to kids. Now as an educator and a mother, what she wants to pass on is that a song can be bigger than just a beat, though she’ll be the first to admit that without that beat, even the most noble message runs the risk of failing to be heard.

“It can’t just be about the message, because it’s not going to stick,” she says. Striking that artistic balance is why it’s been two years since her last release, Soular System, but those two years have given her plenty to say.

“What’s on my mind is revolution, Black Lives Matter and trying to figure out a way that I can make music that really reflects the anger I have for what’s going on,” she says. “I want to make music that educates people as to what it is we’re fighting against.”

Music has always served as a tool for advocates of change, but in these days of Black Lives Matter, the responsibility of hip hop can’t be understated. Young black men and women are coming of age in a world where the painful realities of what it means to be black in America are dominating the national conversation. As an educator and an emcee, she sees it as her mission to spread the importance of that responsibility.

“What I’m interested in doing is helping young people understand how [hip hop] connects to issues facing the community and how they can use it to advocate for something different.”

It’s also imperative that she’s setting a strong example for young women. “Pretty good for a girl” has commonly been a backhanded compliment, and invitations to contribute vocals on stereotypical “chick tracks” or to be managed by men who claim to be able to help her career are all unfortunate realities of being a woman in hip hop. None of that has kept her from fighting for the respect she’s earned or speaking honestly about her own experience as a woman and a young mother.

“When it comes to my daughter, I want to make sure that she views a strong woman as someone who’s independent, smart and someone who’s a hard worker as opposed to someone who’s just sexy.”

Both of her kids – she has a son, as well – are actively involved with her life as a performer. She takes them to the studio, to shows and even has them contributing on stage and on tracks. It all comes back around to her role as an educator, always making sure that her own kids as well as her fans and the kids she works with at AS220, are coming up knowing that their art can be more substantial than what she calls the “Happy Meal Hip Hop” they hear on the radio.
“Mainstream hip hop nowadays… I don’t really dis it, but it’s like the McDonald’s of [hip hop] culture. There’s soul food and then there’s a Happy Meal, and you need to know where to find good food.”

No one ever changed the world with a side of fries. That’s why Anjel provides healthy beats and rhymes, showing her kids and her community that hip hop isn’t junk food, but the nourishment that can help power real revolution.