Music Spotlight - Kimmortal
Dedicating this blog post to an artist whose work was formative for me in being able to find and connect with liberatory art that really resonates with me.
Kimmortal is an interdisciplinary artist of many incredible creative talents ranging from illustration, animation, theatre, performance, and more, but they are perhaps best known for their soulful hip hop music as an accomplished rapper-singer-songwriter. Listening to their discography offers a powerful reflection of who they are as a queer non-binary Filipinx artist and the values they live by, with their lyrics breezily flowing between subjects like decolonization, abolition, queer love, healing intergenerational trauma, and more. Their commitment to social justice feels truly and beautifully embodied within their music and artistic presence. These subjects often interweave seamlessly with personal reflections on identity and community, with heartfelt vulnerability and an unapologetic sense of self stitching them together. Kimmortal wears their heart and their politics proudly on their sleeve in their music, and it goes together splendidly.
The music of Kimmortal was a significant gateway for me when it comes to finding independent hip hop artists making art about the kinds of topics that I think are important and engaging. It's always wonderful when we feel our experiences and values reflected back to us in the art we enjoy, and Kimmortal's music clicked with me in such an immediate and intuitive way as I heard them discussing the very same kinds of things I cared about. There are songs like "Ancestral Clock (Boom Bop)" that honour the steady intuition of intergenerational love and survival, and "Sad Femme Club" that is an outrageously fun anthem for everyone out there trying to exist, survive, and thrive in spite of the racist, colonial, cisheteropatriachal, and various other oppressive systems in the world.
I also love the way that Kimmortal embodies their commitment to solidarity, including through their collaborations. Tracks like "Jungle (feat. Jillthy & Missy D)" and "Stars (ft. JB the First Lady & Missy D)" are such a treat, featuring verses from femcees of colour within the same local hip hop community as Kimmortal. The track "Stop Business As Usual PART 2 ft. Phoenix Pagliacci & Bobby Sanchez", a reminder and rallying cry against the ongoing genocide in Palestine and other global injustices, is also a compelling and necessary expression of their solidarity.
Listening to Kimmortal's work feels energizing and restorative for me, and like a particularly enjoyable way to spend time re-grounding myself in community-minded values that I share. I'm grateful to keep learning from and listening to artists like Kimmortal, and look forward to whenever new music drops from them!