Taking inspiration from a long lineage of family matriarchs, D Smoke returns with a surreptitiously tender homage to the realities of existing as a Black woman in a world that often conflates a woman’s tolerance for suffering as a signaler of love.
Proselytizing over a stripped-back beat, the “Black Habits” rapper ponders the ways in which men can re-contextualize their ideas of intimacy to better uplift women, and in doing so, themselves and their communities. The accompanying video, which was directed by Child, and features his mother and cousin Tiffany Gouché, provides a stirring and emotive illustration of these very questions.
They are simply brought to life in grayscale against the backdrop of abandoned silos and rolling plains interspersed with powerful portrait homages to the many Black women the world has lost to violence.