Joy Oladokun - Hope is a Heavy Thing
Bee Delores reviews Hope Is a Heavy Thing, the urgent new album from Joy Oladokun. "It's long overdue to actually listen to Black women about brutal reality," writes Dolores.
Joy Oladokun's Hope is a Heavy Thing emerges as not only a celebration of renewal and re-centering of self and identity, but it's also a tribute to the music that's long inspired the Arizona native. She weaves afrobeats ("Toothache," "Easy Company"), The Ronettes polish ("Don't Call Me Baby!"), and traditional singer-songwriter sharpness ("TOGIAIM," "Zombie," "Die Young") into a vibrant tapestry that's equally classic and contemporary.
The boundary-pushing project, produced by Oladokun with contributions from Nigerian producer Spellz, ebbs and flows in oceanic, sonic waves. It's as though Oladokun time travels through the decades, collecting styles, tones, and approaches to fuse with her own vocal and musical flourishes. "There's not too much left to say / Nothing can disfigure the soul quite like pain," she confides in the closing track, "Time is a River." It's a luminescent folk song that summarizes her journey, exhibiting through her best batch of songs in her catalog.
With "Dear Maria," Oladokun calls out the "noise on the radio," the "violence on the television," and the "rumors of radiation in the air." The recitation thumps and lurches along, an earnest plea for intervention from a higher power. "Easy Company" follows with its rally for "doomsday dancing," she sings. "Sounds like a good plan to me." Later, she focuses in on Black and Brown bodies "working so hard to be free" before she lights up the dance floor with a hypnotic, spinning vocal and trippy production.
Nigerian artist Adekunle Gold joins Oladokun on the magnificently ethereal "Sage," which serves as a salve for a troubled, sick society. "When will this world change / The end is on its way," they sing, letting their words float away on summer's final gentle breath. Oladokun makes good on that warning with the next song, "The End of the World," an electric cry to pay attention to what's actually happening. "If you don't think there's a problem, you should open your eyes before you open your mouth," she crows over fuzzy electric guitar and urgent background vocals.
Hope is a Heavy Thing cuts deep into the state of the United States, particularly, and one's place within that hellscape. It's hard not to be personally affected from the barrage of terribly news, from ICE agents kidnapping people off the streets to relentless violence against the LGBTQ+ community in legislation and physical attacks. It's a cross to bear just to survive these days. Joy Oladokun explores these ideas through reigniting her creative spark. At the intersection of her Blackness and queerness, the record captures a unique experience of endurance despite a system purposely erected to destroy one's spirit and determination to change things.
It's long overdue to actually listen to Black women about brutal reality. We've seen closed eardrums, especially from white women, for far too long. Hope is a Heavy Thing is a call to action on both a personal and universal level—choosing to be complacent in life leads to contamination of the soul and leaks out into every facet of modern life. It's time to wake up.
