Gita - Mardi Gras (prod. Darq E Freaker)

Oakland and LA-raised, Harlem-based rapper Gita released two tracks last year, Let That and Hood Rich, but it’s with her new single for ASL Records that she grabs you by the collar and demands your attention. Over a fiery beat from Darq E Freaker (who’s lurking outside Gita’s house at the beginning of this video, which is presumably how he got the gig), she displays theatrical flair alongside a low-slung, aggressive flow – all of which combined makes for a gripping track.

In this video in particular, shot in an abandoned Victorian house in London by director Yoni Lappin, Gita aesthetically has a lot in common with Nicki Minaj – not just in a surface level pink-haired kind of way, or in a “she’s female and she raps” kind of way, but in the way she takes hyper-feminine and hyper-sexualised symbols and assigns power to them, using them to fiercely assert her authority. With Minaj there’s a lot of questionable “bitch”-dropping and pretty un-nuanced ass-worship that’s tricky to defend, but in the video for Mardi Gras Gita comes across as plain hard. She sits in a bath, but she’s not an object, and there’s body-popping, but it’s of a straight-faced, confrontational kind that leaves you quaking. This is a fearsome new face; she’s got the shock subversions of early Minaj, but a voice all of her own.

ASL Records released ‘Mardi Gras’ today, 15th April 2013.