Music Suggestion: Dessa

Cafe Society
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Dessa is a spoken word artist, author, and MC with the Doomtree hip hop collective out of Minnesota. She’s also earned an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota.

She’s released two albums. The first, False Hopes, was an EP from 2005, and the second, A Badly Broken Code was released this past January. I heard about her around this time, when she was profiled on NPR. I was taken with NPR doing an editorial on a hip hop album, and to profile a bit, I was pretty curious about an album made by a white Minnesotan woman with a degree in Philosophy.

It took a couple months for me to remember to check her out, but when I did, I fell in love immediately. The albums are both amazing, with clever and droll lyrics rapped by a hypnotic voice. She also mixes it up, with Dixon’s Girl having a 40s sensibility, Kites being as intimate as anything penned by Ani DiFranco, and numerous other songs, like Matches to Paper Dolls, being rapped over string arrangements.

My favorite song, though, is probably The Bullpen, which is strangely absent from YouTube despite seemingly the rest of her discography being available. It’s a slam against the male dominated rap industry, and the way she, and presumably other female MCs, are treated by them. The entire second stanza, quoted below, makes me smile like a fool:

*It’s been assumed I’m soft or irrelevant
Cause I refuse to down play my intelligence
But in a room of thugs and rap veterans
Why am I the only one
Who’s acting like a gentleman
Good form bad taste
Pity what a waste
All that style, not a thing to say
Looks to me like
A little of your true school
Is at the shallow end of the typing pool
All cloak, no dagger
Just smoke and swagger
I hope that your battery’s charged
Cause I found this here ladder
Now your ceilings don’t matter
Check me out,
Now I got glass floors

*and the first four lines of the second stanza – *They love me, they love me not */ *Pulling pedals off my bike */ *You gotta strike while the irony’s still hot */ No telling what the kids might like – just make me laugh out loud. I fully admit, as mentioned above, that part of my initial interest in her was the seeming incongruity of a white girl from Minnesota rapping, and I love that she acknowledges that she is probably seen as nothing more than a novelty for hipsters, but anyone that actually pays any attention know that she’s more than that. She deserves to be what Lauryn Hill was on track to be following the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

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Obligatory bump before it falls off to the second page.

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She rocks brass knuckles over her kid gloves.

Dessa is certainly one of the standouts of the Doomtree crew (all of whom are very talented). I finally got to see her perform this past weekend (at a block party I recommended in a “What to do in the Twin Cities” thread recently) and it was outstanding. The Lauryn Hill comparison is appropriate–she can do a great party jam, like the one I linked above; but she really stands out on more emotional tracks. My personal favorite is “Mineshaft II”, in which our speaker, attempting to find it in her heart to forgive an ex-boyfriend for unspecified wrongs, reaches out to her inner child to overcome the experiences that have made her cynical and jaded. The lyrics genuinely give me chills (I love when she addresses her ten year old self as “a stick figure with a busted grin/still ignorant of all the trouble I’ma get us in”).

In addition to being a talented MC, she’s got a great singing voice, and she flexes it on tracks like “Go Home.”

One thing about the album names: As Hades says above, her first EP is called False Hopes, but EVERYONE in the Doomtree crew has released a record called False Hopes (and several of the ensemble records have the same title as well…they were up to a total of 15 albums under that name, last I checked). So if you’re looking this up or ordering it, make sure you check the artist as well as the album–otherwise you might end up with a Cecil Otter record (which is quite good, but probably not what you’re looking for).

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I listened, I bought the CD, and I’ve been happily listening for several hours.

thumbs up

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Awesome! I’ve started a half dozen music recommendation threads over the years here, but I think you were the first person to tell me they listened to and bought an album by an artist I suggested. I’m really happy I was able to turn someone else onto her.

The entire Doomtree collective is playing in Atlanta in November and I am trying to decide if I want to go. I like Doomtree okay, but I absolutely love Dessa, and she is who I would be going to see, so I’d be bummed if she didn’t get much time on stage.

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The tour will have gone on for two weeks by the time it hits Atlanta…maybe you can look for reviews from earlier shows to see if she’s getting enough stage time to make it worth your while.

She just announced she’s going to be opening for Mos Def when he comes through Minneapolis next week. I’d love to go, but I won’t be able to get the evening off work. Dang.