Moor Mother | Artist
Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother is an American musician, poet, and interdisciplinary artist born 1981 in Aberdeen, Maryland. With her unique blend of spoken word poetry, avant-garde soundscapes, and socio-political commentary, Moor Mother has carved out a distinct and uncompromising artistic vision that pushes boundaries. Her music often delves into themes of race, gender, oppression, and resistance, drawing inspiration from the Black experience and the ongoing struggle for social justice. Her lyrics are powerful, raw, and unapologetically confrontational, addressing systemic injustices and advocating for change with a fierce urgency. Ayewa grew up in a public housing project on the outskirts of Baltimore and later moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to study photography at the Art Institute. As well as being a solo artist she is one half of the collective Black Quantum Futurism, along with Rasheedah Phillips, plus she co-leads the groups Irreversible Entanglements and 700 Bliss. As a soloist she released two albums in 2015 then a third, 2016's Fetish Bones, which began to attract attention. After several more albums which went largely unnoticed, 2020 saw the release of the excellent Circuit City, which attracted critical praise. That same year she released the album Brass, a collaboration with hip-hop artist Billy Woods, which firmly established her presence on the abstract hip-hop scene. Then followed three consistently good albums in Black Encyclopedia of the Air (2021), Jazz Codes (2022), and her latest, The Great Bailout (2024). Ayewa's music is described as experimental hip-hop, which blends industrial sound collage, neo-soul, jazz-rapping, and poetry. In describing her album Jazz Codes, one reviewer described her as "a very avant-garde artist, a poetess with a strong voice and the will to amplify it through the use of refined forms of music. Her music is very experimentally textured, a carpet of jazzy sonorities, sometimes saxophone-driven, with vocal excerpts and layers of glitchy but very organic-sounding samples." In addition to her music, Moor Mother is also a prolific visual artist and curator, using various media to explore and challenge societal norms and structures. She is a co-founder of the Black Quantum Futurism collective, which aims to explore the intersections of futurism, Blackness, and radical creativity. In the fall of 2021, Ayewa began serving as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.
Artist Website: moormother.net
Featured Albums: Moor Mother
Related Artists: Billy Woods, Irreversible Entanglements, Camae Ayewa
