Rapsody spent 2020 releasing music that was by turns sad, soulful and cautiously hopeful. But when she wrote “12 Problems,” she was furious. Asked to contribute a song to
Reprise, Roc Nation’s social justice compilation released in October, the North Carolina rapper collected a booming beat from CuBeatz and Don Cannon and let her anger over police brutality and racial violence flow through the mic. “All we see is murder, murder, murder, murder,” she seethes on the track, “and you wonder why we gotta disorder?”
For Rapsody, police brutality against Black Americans was such an emotional issue in 2020 that it couldn’t help but dominate her songwriting. One day she would be filled with rage; the next, supreme sadness over historic discrimination, or deep emotion for the families of the victims of violence. “There’s so much to talk about with it,” she says, “and it’s all heavy, but it’s all real.”