Suite Trap Blues: Vol 1

Medium: Audio, Written Word

Suite Trap Blues: Volume 1 is a collection of poems I have written alongside audio recordings of interviews in a mixtape suite of creative writing that explicitly reinterprets contemporary and classic Trap music as a form of the Blues. This project is a study in power dynamics and how they impact modes of emotional expression for my generation. As a poet and reader of poetry, we are taught to never assume the poet is the speaker of the poem. In this project, I am the speaker, sometimes. Other times, I am writing as representative of stories told in between the lines.

The actual voices of community members are heard in this project just as equally as my own voice, and that is why I chose this mixed medium of audio and written word. These voices are present consistently throughout the interviews and interludes, and words of the songs and poems used to inspire this project as a whole.

This project is important because Black music is one of the most accessible spaces of joy that we have for ourselves. However, in Trap music, much like the Blues, there is much to mourn and much to celebrate simultaneously. In this country that is inherently and overtly antagonistic, expressing Black joy is a radical act. For us, to make proclamations of our surroundings, aspirations and desires—to simply have the audacity to imagine out loud is a contribution to the archival oral tradition that records this truth: We are here. We live. We suffer. We survive. We thrive. We sparkle. We dream and fulfill our dreams and long for more, nonetheless.

I'm attempting to call attention to this musical movement and interrogate it in a way such that we may be able to explore, expand and be in touch with the parts of ourselves that we may find in it, and do so unashamedly, and safely. In our sounds, in our words, we are the creators. We have ownership and agency. We are on all the edges, existing, if not living, if not thriving. We, too, sing the blues. We, too, sing songs of celebration.