The #BLACKBOYJOY of Smino

MusiQology’s Shakira King reflects on the deep roots of optimism that set Smino’s trap apart.

“Smino’s music is anti-first impressions,” my friend and culture commentator Tirhakah Love said in a recent tweet. It’s trap music, but not like the kind that has taken over the radio and the culture more broadly. He rhymes, but his twisting bars find a way to rhyme “10 puppies” with “Japanese” and “push-up” with “what’s up” in a way that, on first listen, is both fitting and unnatural at the same time. It’s familiar but strange nonetheless.

On popular songs like “L.M.F.” and “Wild Irish Roses,” his thick southern drawl and the uncanny ability to switch his rhyming and vocal style forces you to listen hard, and each listen reveals new layers of lyrical smarts and rhyming flourishes. Andre 3000 (a clear influence after whom Smino’s added his own steeze) looms large over Smino’s work: Like The Love Below, Noir is a storytelling jawn. It’s a tale of the modern millennial, a melange of shiny, sexy, smokeable, astrological, and pre-gameable. Let’s be honest (and I write like Smino for the women who love anything with the name Fenty on it): Paying 11.50 for a drink ain’t really the move. Smino knows this and other millennial truisms. His sound reflects that sensibility.

Born Christopher Smith in St. Louis, Smino entered into a lengthy family musical tradition. With a mother who sings, a father who plays keys and a grandfather that played for legendary blues musician Muddy Waters, he began releasing music earlier this decade before a fitting introduction to the mainstream — on a well-regarded-but-unreleased Big Sean track, Living Single, also featuring Chance The Rapper and Jeremih. But despite a growing profile, Smino’s sophomore album, Noir (2018), holds on to those personal musical roots. Song like “Kovert,” “Merlot,” and “Hoopti” centering his jazz and gospel influences while tracks like “Klink,” “Summer Salt” and “Pizano” illustrate a broader hip-hop influence and set him apart from the average in the world of trap music.

But further, unlike many artists gaining momentum in the Migos-dominated musical world, Smino’s brand of trap does not feel like the early 2000s brand that seems to have won the ears of listeners and label heads. More specifically, Smino’s sound and song are void of a specific affiliation with the trap: the talks of cooking work and fighting for survival. Instead, Smino’s brand of trap is full of #BlackBoyJoy.

The more I listened to Noir, the more I realized that, despite its complexities, the biggest takeaway was actually quite simplistic: I loved it because it made me happy. This is black superhero music, where the sludge and drama of the trap setting is reset and refigured, instead celebrating artistic flexibility and fluency. It’s a whole new kind of black sonic excess and excellence.

This sense of joy is also part of his public persona, such as his Instagram page, which is a scroll full of #BlackBoyJoy from the Air Force 1 collection, to the impeccable skin care, and his silk-lined hooded sweatshirt brand Zero Fatigue. Have I mentioned he’s also a naturalista committed to protecting his wonderful crown of hair? Musically and extramusically, Smino is all about being his full, black-ass self at all times.

Smino’s presence feels particularly crucial when it seems like being your black self anywhere in America lately feels so impossible. Our existence has been under attack since before we stepped foot on this continent, rendered starkly in recent years on social media, where anti-black sentiments flourish. The 2016 election exacerbated the appearance of such sentiments and we saw how not only black people but other marginalized groups and their humanity came under direct and unhesitating attack. We began to see that even in some of the most powerful positions in the country, you could still be a racist and thrive.

What’s more, though, is that any time we center ourselves and our joy we ALSO come under attack. This past summer we saw the ways in which these exacerbated conditions enabled people coming for our joy: Enemies such as BBQ Becky, Cornerstore Caroline, and Permit Patty to now felt emboldened to use the police as their own personal security service, and while Black Twitter joked about these folks, their power and danger was very real. Multiple black people had the police called on them simply for existing.

This is what makes Smino’s optimist intervention so refreshing and important. Black music is a hugely influential (and profitable) part of the music industry. It’s hard existing in a world that wants to capitalize off of the things that come naturally to you and give you NONE of the credit. So it’s important to our survival and preservation of our musical culture that we create things that are “blackity-black-black”. So to me Noir is resistance music.

So often we see resistance as being an activist: writing some legislation, an op-ed, a book, or a song/album with “purpose.” But really resistance can be so much more, and Smino uses his artistry to show the world that he is not afraid to live both boldly and simply at the same time. His joy is activism. His activism is joy.

Smino and other artists like him remind me that as a black person I deserve to be my full self at all times. That, I too, deserve to talk about and roll one up without being called “ratchet.” That I deserve to prioritize my joy and sensuality without being demonized, and that my joy is resistance. And it is powerful.

Shakira King is an educator, activist, and creator who serves as Program Coordinator for the nascent MusiQology Rx program. She is a native Philly ‘Jawn’ and runs her own blog (Koffie Stay Talkin’), podcast (Passion Meets Politics), and streetwear brand (Jawn Apparel). You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram (@koffiekakeki).