“Hip-hop is everything beautiful,” STL GLD leader Moe Pope reflects in a new video posted to the group’s Instagram. It’s only natural, then, that it’s also Pope’s antidote of choice for uprooting the all the world’s virulent ugliness.
Ahead of their new record Rock Boyega — which drops drops November 11 via AR Classic Records — the Boston hip-hop group has delivered their new single “Resisting,” a retaliative sucker punch aimed at police brutality. “The violence flooding my iris / Is causing me to grab a mic and fight like a tyrant,” Pope raps as the song comes to its grating final chorus.
And fight he does, in explicit terms, even by STL GLD’s no-holds-barred standards, painting with strokes of “bullets flying,” “blood leaking,” and “loud sirens.” But it’s the chorus where Pope wields his words with the most poignancy: “I said ‘freeze!’ / Hands up / Get on the floor / Stop resisting.” Even with so few phrases, “Resisting” presents chilling, motivating storytelling in its purest form.
“‘Resisting’ is usually the last thing you hear before a boot, baton, a fist, or worse is levied upon a human when dealing with law enforcement,” Pope explains. “Hip-hop is always my way of flipping anything negative and making it work in a way in which I lose my fear and regain strength. Stop resisting, my words, my art, that’s my source of freedom.”
Tap in to “Resisting” below, and snag tickets to the group’s November 10 album release show at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston.
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