Rapsody has collaborated with the likes of Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar and Erykah Badu, but now she’s teamed up with Disney to work on an EP honoring Black lives. The Grammy nominated star will be featured on I Can’t Breathe/Music for the Movement, a collaboration between Disney Music Group and ESPN’s The Undefeated.
The EVE rapper, who is not a stranger to recording songs about the Black experience, thought carefully about new ways she could tell Black stories and ultimately came up with “Pray Momma Don’t Cry,” a song partly inspired by Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).”
Rapsody channeled her thoughts on slain Black victims Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin into the song.
“What does it feel like when you go to those funerals? All these black cars and trucks, everybody dressed in black, the emotion. How does that feel after you’ve gone through that, and you go home and that person is not in your life anymore? That’s kind of the energy or emotion I wanted to touch on,” she told the Associated Press.
She added that is really excited that “Disney would want to take on” a project meant to praise Black people.
“They really have been standing behind what we have been asking everybody to do: Use your voice. Use your platform. Use your dollars where they can count,” she said. “We can educate, inspire, heal people through music.”
Rapsody’s song is one of four songs on the EP, but the only original one on the project. She is hoping the entire project could speak to those who listen to it.
“Sometimes music does more than sitting across the table trying to hammer something into somebody’s head who just doesn’t get it because they don’t live your life,” she said. “Music is a universal language in that way.”
I Can’t Breathe/Music for the Movement is slated to come out on Friday (Oct. 16).