Expressing herself through spoken word before crossing over to music, Brooklyn rapper Latasha Alcindor aka L.A. uses art as a way to break out of boxes society has tried to confine her in and create her own sense of identity. She’s just released a music video, directed by Fro Casso, for “The Island”. The song is a celebration and an acceptance of the self. As L.A. dances alone near the shore, she delivers, “Brown girl curves allow me to spin the waistline like my African kin / Never been to Ghana but the melatonin make connection.” Earlier this year, she spoke to StyleLikeU about her journey to reconcile disparate perceptions of her identity and how she came to realize the power of not fitting in.
She says, “There’s an essence about blackness that is godly for me. It’s real, it’s mysterious, and it’s from the Earth.” This intangible yet naturalistic quality is adapted well into the metaphor of the island. Separated by the water, onlookers can only observe from afar L.A. taking in this liberation with her friends. “People have to reach out to us to kind of know what this is about, to know what this lifestyle is about–that is beauty–to have to reach us to know us.”
