Rapper-activist Linqua Franqa is on a mission to change both music and politics
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Athens, Ga., is often regarded as one of the best college towns in America. It is home to the University of Georgia, also home to a big music scene. But around 30% of the city's residents live below the poverty line. That number's even higher for children. Mariah Parker, aka the artist Linqua Franqa, is working to bridge that divide. Allyson McCabe has their story.
ALLYSON MCCABE, BYLINE: When the University of Georgia set out to expand its campus in the early 1960s, the homes of at least 50 Black families were razed to build new dorms. Last year, Mariah Parker was instrumental in the passage of the Linnentown Resolution, which calls for reinvestment in the community led by the community.
MARIAH PARKER: And it's an exciting day to pay homage to the piece of Athens' Black history.
MCCABE: Parker grew up outside of Louisville, Ky. They wrote raps in high school and performed in college poetry slams. Drawn to the robust music scene, Parker moved to Athens in 2013.
PARKER: Like, meeting - like, every single person, I mean, was, like, a bassist or a vocalist or a keyboardist or, like, had a show this Thursday. But I noticed its lack of color. All the rappers were sort of relegated to, like, the corners of the city both musically and geographically.
MCCABE: So Parker started organizing hip-hop shows downtown, centering Black artists. When one of the headliners couldn't make it to a big event, they stepped up to the mic.
PARKER: In the two months' lead-up to the show, I, like, wrote my entire set, which became my first album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE CON AND THE CAN")
PARKER: (Rapping) I'm waking up at 7. I'm stretching and eating vegetables 'cause beating my demons could never be fearsome as feeding them and feeling them beaten up on my ear drums.
MCCABE: Performing as Linqua Franqa, Parker rapped about their struggles with mental health, addiction and the decision to end a pregnancy, connecting these experiences to social inequality and the need for change.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE CON AND THE CAN")
PARKER: (Rapping) Because everyone want to complain about the state of the system, congratulate themselves on Facebook for paying attention. And, homie, I know you're right, but if nobody mobilizes a noble fight, [expletive] we staying slaves for centuries.
MCCABE: Ethnomusicologist Kyra Gaunt says Parker's music is deeply fused with protest.
KYRA GAUNT: It has traces of aspects of African ideologies about individuality within collectivity. It has traces of what hip-hop's origins are founded in. Music was of the people, and it spoke about the plight of everyday life.
MCCABE: As Parker's audiences grew, so did their involvement in local politics. Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz remembers meeting Parker when he was running for office in 2018.
KELLY GIRTZ: You know, we live in an era when surface issues seem very prominent, when self-promotion is a sort of hallmark of the day across the political spectrum. And certainly while Mariah has a performer's element, there is a distinct authenticity.
MCCABE: When the longtime county commissioner representing Parker's district stepped down to launch his own mayoral campaign, Girtz encouraged 26-year-old Parker to run for the vacated seat. Parker says the opposition was immediate.
PARKER: I had recently done an interview with the local newspaper in which I described my life as being in shambles. And hecklers came to the campaign launch to read aloud from the article.
MCCABE: But Parker refused to be silenced or shamed.
PARKER: So I was straight up with them. There are hundreds if not thousands of people in our district that are behind on their car payments, that are going to eat ramen today, that could find themselves unhoused next week if they get in yet another fight with their husband.
MCCABE: Parker won the election. Now in their second term, they're releasing a new album that doubles as a Ph.D. dissertation in language and literacy education at the University of Georgia. Parker says its title, "Bellringer," has two meanings.
PARKER: Both in the sense of knocking somebody out and, like, calling people to action.
MCCABE: The title track revisits the 1991 murder of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, shot from behind by a convenience store owner who accused her of stealing a bottle of juice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BELLRINGER")
PARKER: (Rapping) Stick a target on me if you got to. I'm just here to cop a bottle of that watery concoction by the strawberries. Show me some camaraderie. We both have probably seen some awful robberies and know that grim reaper keeping his sickle sharp. If I die, don't pray. You better riot. If I die, don't pray. You better riot.
MCCABE: "Abolition" loops in political activist and scholar Angela Davis, connecting generations as they work through cycles of progress and pushback.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ABOLITION")
PARKER: (Singing) If being radical is grasping from the root, that's just what I'll do. That's just what I'll do.
MCCABE: Davis says music is central to the work of imagining and realizing freedom.
ANGELA DAVIS: My mentor, Herbert Marcuse, once pointed out that art itself doesn't change the world, but art changes the people and can give them impulses to go out and transform the world.
MCCABE: Whether performing on stage or serving in office, Parker says the same credo applies - no enemy but apathy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOLD BIKE")
PARKER: (Singing) You see that girl on that gold bike, that gold bike that that girl rides? That girl writes such cold rhymes. That girl might go worldwide.
MCCABE: For NPR News, I'm Allyson McCabe.
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