The rain exploding
in the air is love.
-sonia sanchez
the color of rain is a compositional tour-de-force of poetry, emotion, and resonance. Rain nourishes, blesses, and renews. It loves everything it touches. This album is the space between droplets. At the crux of rising fascism, aja monet offers a waking-dream intervention, amid the sinister reality of contemporary events. A prompt to look up at the sky within., the color of rain is an imbrication of familiar genres forged beyond category or definition. as one stride’s through the sequence of poems, each song shifts between musical perceptions of jazz, soul, hip hop, rhythm and blues. surrealism at it’s finest, a marvelous unleashing of the mind. the color of rain reminds us that poetry predates the very blueprints of genre.
This is an evolution from the intimate, live-café energy of aja monet’s Grammy-nominated debut album, when the poems do what they do. While she nods at the Black Arts Movement’s legacy and lineage, this sophomore album is a conjure to experiment and explore the interior. If the first album was a gentle altar call, then the second is an impassioned call to bare arms, a definitive guide to choose your weapon, wisely. If the pen is the sword, music sharpens or blunts the blade.
Live instrumentation anchors the record but it’s spirit surfaces in pre- and post- production with warped sonics, wayward voltas, and delicate investigations. Meshell Ndegecello conducts the illustrious cast of musicians while Justin Brown bolsters the prismatic vision. In true community organizing fashion, aja knows how to bring artists together, recruiting meaningful musical contributions from Burniss Travis, Josh Johnson, Daniel Mintseris, Jermaine Paul, Ambrose Akinmusire and Nico Segal.
aja monet recites poetry with verve and risk. what sets her apart as a poet is her vulnerable immersion in the music. Her vocal delivery is a rare art. she’s not just monotonously reciting words over a stubborn beat. aja’s tone, rhythm, and cadence interacts with music melodically and vice versa. her instincts as a touring bandleader are felt on this record as we bear witness to the mood and meter of her words. They lead these songs by refrain, invocation, or image. At times the urgency of what is said underscores the deliberate breaths of stillness. As we listen intently, we catch glimpses of aja singing throughout the color of rain. It’s a sonic collage of sounds and personas but most importantly—commands presence.
For the devoted lovers of poetry, there are breadcrumbs of metaphor and meaning embedded within and throughout her musical choices. ‘Say It With Your Chest,’ opens the color of rain as a sublime drumming mantra for courageous truth telling. “elsewhere” poetically grooves and glimmers in honor of Sly Stone’s memory–featuring soul-stirring vocals by Georgia Anne Muldrow, Novena Carmel, and Meshell Ndegeocello. The afro-punk drum and horn haunts in “hollyweird” as aja reports on the Los Angeles fires of 2025, smoldering of visceral descriptions. With synth finger paint on “withness” and trumpet sketches on several songs such as “skinfolk,” the album draws the listener close. And reaches an intense polyrhythmic rally in “for the congo.” aja tells us to “talk about the blood” repetitively.
Soaked by absurd and provocative vocal treatments, her poem, “song of myself” is a direct nod to the poet Walt Whitman as aja ventures to confront the loose contradictions within a “self.” She straddles the world between that which makes sense and that of which our senses are tested. We don’t have to look far for the shattered ground that is paved of the illogical and magical, there’s a song called Melting Clocks. Which, if even a nod to Dali only in name, boasts a tempo that darts, transports, and moves as if time itself were being questioned. How do you listen when sound is being rearranged in front of you? This work makes us wonder about what we know to be true and stirs us to lean into the mystical unknown. The song extends with clever lyrical offerings from Mick Jenkins, Vic Mensa, and Josh Lane.
We are encouraged to consider the temporality of love as the color of rain renders a poetic ballad by way of, “Love is a Choosing,” featuring the fresh breeze of Mereba’s voice. While aja’s work sits in the knuckled terrain of advocacy and protest, it is without glamour and showmanship. “I do not trust a mouth that has never pronounced the word, sister,” a testament to the onus she responds to, that of care for dignity and equality, as it echoes in the lives of women. Sister is a verb. “To Sister.” This sentiment is realized with vocal breaths by Ganavya and hints of harp by Brandee Younger. It’s a real treat to hear the playful adlibs in “i know that i don’t know” and suspends us into a moment for humor and insight. the brave and daring bass steers the listener through the pressing depths that is “every media minute.” A poem that mirrors the moment. “working class musicians,” in its sonic landscape is unrelenting – rapturous jazz, hands and hums, chants that hold fort as propulsive tenors. Art is a labor. A call to testify, imagine, and transmute, the color of rain is the hue of daring introspection. This album is aja monet’s refusal of convention and apathy. The final words of the closing song “indigo” encourages the listener not just to hear, but to drift, to wander, to go inward—to feel. Be the poem we need right now.
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