House Anxiety / Ourness · March 5, 2021
Smiling with No Teeth, the debut album by Ghanian-Australian artist Genesis Owusu, is an incredibly striking first showing. The depth and clarity of this project comes as a complete shock, not because Owusu’s previous work wasn’t up to snuff, but because this tape is just miles ahead of anything shown before. Owusu conjures up a wide array of catchy hooks and ear-worm instrumentals without sacrificing any of the poignancy of his lyrics or message. The narrative of the album is structured around his relationship with the ‘black dog’ that hounds him from the very first track onwards. Winston Churchill famously coined this term ‘black dog’ as a metaphor for the severe depression that followed him all his life, and Owusu employs it to a similar degree. Despite his undeniable talents as a wordsmith, however, Churchill was also a total chump whose contributions to the global system of colonial oppression were single-handedly responsible for the enslavement, starvation, and murder of tens of millions. This history is not lost on Owusu, though, and he flips the phrase to give it another meaning throughout the project. The dog in