Ant Thomas doesn’t shy away from checking his privilege — and he hopes you don’t, either. The Boston artist crafts a reflective “Shakespearean experience” with his new EP Privilege Pack, released this past Sunday (December 4) after a year of rolling out each “act” individually.
The five-track EP uses Thomas’ vibrant hip-hop to explain what is (and more notably, what isn’t) guaranteed in life, exploring layers like “lack of privilege, earning privilege, having privilege, and losing privilege.” As someone who’s worked everywhere from the Massachusetts State House to the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, Thomas wields a universe of perspective, which he taps into to contextualize his own story.
“Got slept on / We know what that’s about,” he raps on “Jsyk” [“Just So You Know”], contrasting a lack of recognition with his circle’s extra elbow grease: “My whole team put in OT [overtime] / Long nights with no sleep.” On EP closer “Opulence,” Thomas speaks on the grim realities of police brutality, emphasizing the privilege of law enforcement actually protecting you. “We can be Breonna Taylor any given night / And you gon’ get away / If your skin blue or white,” he recites.
“I came up with the name Privilege Pack after completing a diversity workshop, where we had to identify our privilege or lack thereof,” Thomas tells Vanyaland. “The exercise had us work on it from our younger selves to now. It was supposed to show us how we are born into privilege. My experience after completing the workshop is I’ve earned many privileges for myself that I didn’t have and that others are born with. Being a Black male artist and community organizer, I instantly had survivor’s guilt. The Privilege Pack EP is my way of sharing how I earned my privileges in a collection of music that I feel is as diverse as my experiences have been.”
Unpack Thomas’ Privilege Pack below.