Written by Pat Moran
When Akila Divine struts onto a soundstage in pink knee high boots, sexy yet purposeful swagger is already embodied in the track’s bold sinuous rhythms. You could tune out the DayGlo visuals of the Baltimore rapper’s video for her bouncy single “Hello” without missing the point.
Surrounded by a dangling forest of Technicolor toy telephone receivers, Divine draws a direct line between her rap about (mis)communication between the sexes and the fiercely funny feminism exemplified by Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Buoyed by percolating synths and a bubbling bass line, Divine’s deceptively sweet sounding flow entwines rapid-fire rhythmic couplets with the whiplash curve of her feathered free-falling crooning.
“I’ll be a dainty senorita, When I fly to Mexico, I got the bull by his horns, This ain’t my first rodeo”
Divine cocoons her fierce feminism in a traipsing, tongue-twisting break that dovetails into sultry slurred singing.
“You’re the type to take a woman home, And chew what’s on the bone, spit out the pieces”
Eschewing an angry anti-player polemic, Divine employs mystical language about the furthest depths of the ocean. Women shouldn’t lose focus when they catch feelings, she says. Instead, they can accept their sense of self as sacred.
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