When Kele Okereke couldn’t clear the sample of Paul Blake’s “Rub A Dub Soldier” in time for the release of last year’s 2042, he probably felt gutted that his anthem celebrating blackness would have to be shelved for a later date. Fast forward a year however, and given the current discourse surrounding race that same delay has proven to be a blessing in disguise.
Finally seeing the light of day, “Melanin” opens with the Bloc Party frontman unapologetically taunting the police in lines that now sound morbidly prescient. “I’m glad that we get to share the track now, at a time that it seems more pertinent than ever”, he said in a statement posted onto Twitter. “As a British-born black man I have found living in this country these last few years wounding”, the same statement reads, “making 2042 was my way of trying to understand some of the racial divisions that have come back sharply into focus this past week with the death of George Floyd”.
‘Melanin’ is out today, click here to listen: https://t.co/jI1uRlBxS3 pic.twitter.com/RJ3mkgwVE4
— Kele Okereke (@keleokereke) July 3, 2020
Incorporating styles as diverse as garage, deep house, and indie folk, Kele’s solo material has always provided an avenue of both sonic and thematic exploration. Growing up in the 1980s as a gay black man in Liverpool, it is no surprise that examining social issues should be a recurring feature in his most personal work. Named after the pigment that darkens the skin when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, “Melanin” is Kele’s way of questioning Britain’s conceptions of race, arguing for radical change in the way the UK teaches its imperial history. “I believe that if we truly want to dismantle the racial division in this country then it starts with the education system”, he says. “We all need to study a syllabus that tells the truth about the reality of Britain’s colonial past, that isn’t just a celebration of the ‘glory days’ but that looks unflinchingly at the horrors this country has perpetrated in the name of empire. For if we are to learn anything from Britain’s past, we need to have an honest and open dialogue with it.”
‘Melanin’ is out on Friday, click here to pre-save on your favourite streaming service now: https://t.co/jI1uRlBxS3 pic.twitter.com/UxRIUrhh89 — Kele Okereke (@keleokereke) July 1, 2020
Considering nearly a third of Britons still consider the empire something to be proud of, and as recently as this week the historian David Starkey claimed the “honest teaching” of Britain’s colonisation would be as “the most important moment in human history” with consequences that were “in most ways actually fruitful”, “Melanin” couldn’t be arriving at a better time. Kele deftly balances the irony of profiling black men as culturally violent (“He’s down to fight/‘Boy’s not raised right’”) when our education system fails to acknowledge the white violence that brought black people to the UK in the name of ‘culture’ (“How you gonna know if you’re not told/The truth about where you’re from?”). Watch the track’s lyric video below:
