Released in 2018, Sy Smith‘s jazzy-textured Sometimes A Rose Will Grow In Concrete was a seminal project. From the frivolous, flirtatious ‘Perspective’ and ‘Now and Later’, to the hard-hitting ‘We We Never Free’, the album traversed themes of female sexuality and Blackness in America.
The searing poetry and haunting melody of the title song landed it the #1 spot in The House That Soul Built‘s ‘Best Soul Songs of 2018‘. The accompanying music video has just been released.
With particular resonance in these current times as protests against anti-Black racism and violence grip the world, ‘Sometimes A Rose Will Grow in Concrete’ is Smith’s meditation on Black resilience.
Sometimes a rose will grow in concrete
Sometimes the caged bird will sing
Yet, Smith’s ode to Black excellence is balanced with painful honesty as she considers both the injustices and unfairness inherent in the Black condition.
Sometimes the captive don’t complain
Sometimes the choosy have no options
Sometimes the loser wins the fame
In her interview with The House That Soul Built, Smith explained that a producer acquaintance of hers refused the opportunity to work on the song. While an initial setback for Smith, she decided to produce the song itself, thereby embodying the resilience and perseverance conveyed in the lyric. ‘It was probably the best thing that happened. [In producing that song] I became the message. I lived it in the creation… I had to break myself out of my own concrete and bloom as a producer… I had to do that to bring that song to life,’ she says.
Borrowing from Tupac Shakur’s ‘The Rose That Grew From Concrete’, from his posthumous album of the same name (2000), the concrete is seemingly a dual metaphor. On the one hand, it represents white supremacy, which Black people have to battle through in order to bloom and prosper. However, in her interview with The House That Soul Built, Smith explained how the concrete was also a metaphor for the Black community and the Black family, stigmatised by the media as something intrinsically disadvantaging and failing of its members. ‘Our community produces beautiful things because our community is beautiful… We’re not beautiful despite the concrete; we’re beautiful because of the concrete,’ Smith states forcefully.
A meandering, spacey ballad, the minimalism of the production gives focus to the gravitas of the lyric. Smith’s pensive delivery leads the way to her crying final note as the caged bird is freed.
Shot, directed, and edited by Smith’s husband Shawn Carter Peterson, the music video was filmed in Tanzania, East Africa. The video dots around Jambiani Beach on Zanzibar, a Maasai village in Ngorongoro National Park, the Serengeti National Park, and sites around the city of Dar es Salaam.
