Domestic Imperialism

The last song I recorded as a Beacon Hill resident.

I was just reminded that we released this video 5 years ago, today. “Domestic Imperialism” was a song I was working on for a follow-up album to Evidence Of Things Not Seen with Aotearoa-based producer SoulChef. We never finished that album, and there’s a few other songs from this era that weren’t released until just last year on my lost tapes album What We Leave Behind. “Domestic Imperialism” probably wouldn’t of been heard until then either, if it weren’t for what life threw my way 5 years ago.

I was sitting next to Nikkita Oliver in a coffee shop when I wrote this. I actually played them the beat and asked what it made them think of. They said something along the lines of “a city moving”, and the song came from there. At the time I wrote this I was living in an apartment in Beacon Hill, across the street from a house that my mother owned when I was growing up, where we lived when I was writing my very first rhymes and making my very first mix tapes as a teenager. I also was processing the shock of just seeing Yesler Terrace completely torn down, one of Seattle’s last low-income housing projects where my Grandmother lived until she couldn’t live on her own anymore, and a place that I also called home in my early 20’s. Gentrification was and is still happening so fast, it felt like my roommate and myself would not be able to afford Seattle anymore if we ever had to leave.

A few months after writing the words “we can’t afford the city if we leave this house”, I had the opportunity to go to Clarion West, a six-week residential workshop for speculative fiction writing where so many of my heroes got their start in sci-fi, (including Octavia E. Butler), followed by a two-week trip to Cuba to build and share music with the Common Ground Music Project. Right before I was set to go to Clarion, a situation arose at the house and I was faced with the decision of moving at that time, or waiting to see what happens, which included the possibility of having to move in the middle of this 2 month journey I was about to go on.

This is the most vulnerable video I’ve ever done, because that was really my bedroom, I was really moving, and I didn’t know where I was going next. The heartbreak and the uncertainty is all captured in those frames.

“Domestic Imperialism” was the last song I recorded as a Beacon Hill resident, the neighborhood where I spent most of my life. Turning my move into a music video served 2 purposes, I needed help moving and all the family and friends you see in the video helping me emptied the whole place in the time time it took to run through the song one time! What you don’t see in the video is where everything went: a storage unit in a suburb on the east side of Lake Washington, as that was the closest available unit I could find at the time.

I curated most of the lineup for Block Party at The Station that year, which happened exactly one day after I moved out. It’s still one of the events that I’m the most proud of being a part of, and I thought of it as my love letter to Beacon Hill.

After coming back from Cuba, the plan was to see about getting a place in Montreal. I’ve got so many friends I call family there, I’ve been in deep collaboration with a whole crew of musicians there for years, and the rent was still affordable. The challenges would’ve been I’m not a Canadian resident! But I was down to try to figure something out. I actually purchased a one-way ticket to Montreal, but thanks to a few of my closest friends here (Rahwa, Karen, Naomi, Mijo), the day before I boarded that flight I ended up getting hooked up with a perfect place in Rainier Valley where I ended up living for years after. One of the best decisions I was ever lucky enough to make was to stay in Seattle.

I still miss Beacon Hill though.

This video was another love letter to the neighborhood, from 2013. We also were paying homage to Queen Latifah’s “Just Another Day”.

And our Beacon Hill love song also paid homage to the first video I ever had made, “No Label (Esma Remix)” from 2007. This video was the first one Zia Mohajerjasbi ever made, who went on to make so many town classics, and to my knowledge it’s the first time the block I was living on, and the park where I grew up playing basketball were in a music video. For some reason those 2 locations have been revisited by more Seattle rap videos than I can even count now…

Our city is now facing the biggest houseless crisis that we’ve ever seen, and “Domestic Imperialism” still feels relevant. We’ve got to change the narrative around this whole situation. The stories told and the ones not told are often how people get erased, replaced, and how entire communities get vilified. It’s how decisions get made like the violent sweeping of encampments, or how laws get passed that make it harder for our people to survive. There’s entire wars fought with the stories that happen around us every single day. To all of our houseless neighbors, community, family: I see you. I feel you. You are not alone.

it feels like we all in a war with time
cities toss and turn with us on their spine
it's been dark for months, you barely feel the sun
through the brick cold hearts that surrounded us
the ancients be with you, but you don't notice em
i am a vilified species and i don't run
bombed buildings with ghosts, i'm at home with em
they tell stories of a world that i've grown within
and it's changing quick, between coffee sips
of gentrified beans in this place i live,
or this place i lived, all of the soul i give
that survivors grit made people flock to it
they complain about changes after they move in
but they could go back... we got nowhere now
my Grandmother's house is a hole in the ground
and it'll be a high-priced highrise no doubt

i just made a couple songs about where i'm from
i know they sound dope, but it don't mean come
when you move in, somebody else moves out
and i can't afford my city if i leave this house
the place that raised me, neighborhoods that made me
i walk around and don't recognize it lately
the price goes up, we all get pushed out
it's gonna hurt when we finally gotta leave this house

i can't afford my home, they can't afford my soul
we both stand in the rubble like where do we go?
one of us must be from another world
maybe aliens came with these cranes to work
they litter the sky to rearrange the earth
and it has warmed up some since they came for sure
but we know about greed and of industry
how the colonizers came and claimed history
we repeat it so much and so intimately
it's like we are all born into bodies with disease
art is more than a form of our therapy
but Barnes told me to watch out for the 3 P's
they'll try to change the Purpose, of what you do
to discard the People, they can replace you
and then take the Place, gentrification's through
now look where we live, what did Hip Hop do?

i just made a couple songs about where i'm from
i know they sound dope, but it don't mean come
when you move in, somebody else moves out
and i can't afford my city if i leave this house
you could look, listen, but don't move in
spend money with the mom & pop businesses
when you move in, somebody else moves out
we can't afford our city if we leave this house