Stas THEE Boss kept impressively busy in 2020 by releasing two impressive EPs, guesting on the most recent single (“Mega Church”) by space-rap commanders Shabazz Palaces, and oh yeah moving from her native Seattle to Brooklyn. Pretty impressive for a year otherwise marked by pestilence, political and social turmoil, soy sauce challenges and toilet paper wars.
As one half of the now defunct THEESatisfaction—whose legacy includes 2 LPs on Sub Pop and a truly slept on EP called Sandra Bollocks Black Baby—the rapper, producer, beatmaker, and Black Constellation collectivist has continued her explorations across a range of musical territories ranging from breakup albums to instrumental records, but never straying too far from her trademark futurist vibes and polysyllabic rhymes (well, not on the instrumental records) and sharp sense of humor.
On her first EP of 2020, On the Quarner, Stas THEE Boss gifts the listener with a Miles Davis-referencing tone poem weaving together 12 miniature compositions into one seamless piece of music chock full of blissed out beats and head spinning bars and livestreaming memes and Liquid Swords samples and Earl Sweatshirt song quotations and unsolicited invitations to a blind date at the Cheesecake Factory, and on her second EP, recorded after moving to Brooklyn, the listener is presented with woozy psychedelic-soul grooves and seductive vocals, mostly sung rather than rapped as indicated by its exclamatory title, Sang Stasia!
While you may expect all this activity to merit a day off come 2021, on New Years Day she posted a new single which I’m going to go ahead and declare the party jam of the year called “Pandemy Stimmy.” Rapping alongside Nappy Nina and over a pared down steel drum and drum machine beat Stas lays out her demands to the new administration: “Joe Biden better run the bag / the cabinet better be black” then goes on to advocate that they “abolish the prisons and feds” plus the “Nazis and Confederates” and who can argue with any of this. And also, who can say romance and politics don’t mix when Stas pulls off “politicking for bread [with] a poly bitch in my bed.”
Even now Stas THEE Boss is still out on the campaign trail—dropping a new track on Bandcamp just the week before last called “Pretty Boy in Spring Colors” which sounds to my ears ready made for On the Quarner 2 (hey, I can dream) and then earlier this week a new video appeared for one of the mini-compositions from Quarner itself called “Penny” featuring Stas as an astronaut floating in space (see video at top of page) or perhaps on a soundstage in St. Petersburg, Russia if its closing credits are on the level. So here’s to wishing Stas THEE Boss safe travels both to and from other spheres and a continued busy 2021 and welcome to Brooklyn… (Jason Lee)