Moor Mother

On her fifth album, Black Encyclopedia of the Air, Camae Ayewa (better known as Moor Mother) paints a world where time is broken, a shifting wasteland where she explores issues of violence and identity on a generational scale. This catastrophe is a familiar setting for the Philadelphia artist, who blends her poetry and music in a way that harkens back to the proto-rap of Gil Scott-Heron, but also meshes with the avant-garde quality of contemporary hip hop. But genre, like time, is transcended and shattered within Ayewa’s body of work. Her debut LP, 2016’s Fetish Bones, blended growling synths and overbearing static with paper-thin gospel samples and the haunting chant of chain gang songs — and ever since, Ayewa’s music has combined the old and new in ways that blur the difference between t...