Cocaine Biimbie
SIIMBA SELASSIIE
By Natalie Silver
When the forces that be shove me into a reckless stumble into the abyss of new music, I don’t question it at all.
I can—sometimes—be sold on new music without even hearing the song, but only through a haphazard assembly of the bits and pieces of information on the artist orbiting my world. If that’s the case, however, those bits and pieces had better be pretty damn enticing. It’d better be a hard sell.
And when it came to finding SIIMBA SELASSIIE—the Ethiopian-American hip hop artist based in Brooklyn who spent a couple months darting in and out of my cognitive periphery—it was, and I fell in love with the dude before I even pushed play on “Cocaine Biimbie.”
These were my clues:
1) He runs in the same musical circle as and has collaborated with one of the most brilliant and poetic artists of 2019 hip hop, KAMAU. I trust KAMAU’s taste and sensibilities with all of my being.
2) I have found footage of some insanely rowdy pits at SELASSIIE’s shows. My college music magazine once put me on a one-month probation for glorifying the epic violence of the pits in Bay Area punk scenes. Some people think there’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow; I believe there is a neck-breaking, moshpit orgy of pent-up aggression.
3) Rumor has it that Mr. SELASSIIE has a cunnalingus appreciation song on deck with the impending release of his next album, VIICES.
4) The man breathes fire. Literally.
I was sold. Here would be the part where I talk about how Cocaine Biimbie actually sounds, but I kind of don’t want to do that. I want you to succumb to the forces that be (i.e. me) and blindly delve in like I did.
I’ll see you in the pit.