ntsoana

Melo B Jones is the Queen of Boom Bap Soul.

This does not only apply in South Africa, the country she calls home.

This is not up for contestation, and if feeling somewhat about the statement, free up yourself and head on to her soundcloud to get familiar.

Go back, to 2013 and before when she was making acapella music and putting out mixtapes ‘Njumps (pronounced Nyumps…get familiar beypz).

Then came the work: with Euphonik. With Crazy White Boy. And then, after moving back to Jozi to adult, Melo B Jones formed a band. And they played a lot of gigs, in and outside of town.

She made and released new music too: Ideas and drafts from her laptop, and stuff she’d done with regular collaborators Analog Division, a collective of musicians scattered worldwide with whom she’s developed a great working relationship over the years, based off of on-line connections and a desire to express lived experiences through song.

Melo B Jones’ The Start EP was released in June on the Stay True Sounds label, and it’s truly the sickest shit.

It’s like being given a massage naked upon fertile clouds designed to caress, protect and nurture you by feeding you supple soul beats. Her voice is soul-leaning — think ’99; think Erykah Badu for the words, and Jill Scott for the pipes. Think hip hop and pop culture-aware; the edge of wrong; the end of trauma, the very eerie, early signs of love.

Bona, this woman can sang!

Melo B Jones is the reminder we need that we’re all going to be okay. She’s the one to confirm to us that all is fucked, yes, but also that unfucking ourselves, unlocking our potential and being utterly at peace to move at our own pace, is where true liberation begins. She sings it and writes it because she has seen it; she, a Motswana woman in Jozi, plugged-in onto the global complex of daily mindfuckery and ceaseless anxiety, and joy and suffering in equal parts.

From early days jumping on open mics in packed, sweaty Cape Town nightclubs where the kidz gathered under the light of night to map out escape routes to numbness; to latter days where she sings dreams into reality, edits out storylines and formulates narrative arcs that seek to celebrate the might of black women, Melo B Jones’ is a story unfolding, chapter after another, into a paramount body of work whose stamp of excellence bleeds through in every lyric written and every note sung.

She’s the kingpin; get widdit!

* Melo B Jones launches The Start EP @ Kitcheners this Friday, July 28.