Baraka Blue’s Bittersweet Songs

By Nadia S. Mohammad

Ahmad James, better known as Baraka Blue, exudes lyrical smoothness in his debut album, Sound Heart. Inspired by Sufism and the poems of Rumi, this Seattle native shows us why he is so much more than just a rapper.

How did you get into music?

It was just kind of the hip-hop generation all around me. I got really into the whole scene while I was growing up, you know, in elementary [and] middle school. Graffitti, break-dancing, DJing – the whole scene. I was just sold on it from the beginning.
So the lyrical part stuck, huh, not the break dancing?

Yeah, I don’t know for some reason, rapping really drew me in. I’ve always had a real strong relationship with words and the power of language. I started writing rhymes when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Very much imitating what I had heard on radio or MTV. I didn’t really share it with anyone at that point. Eventually I started to rap.

As you developed from there, who were the musical influences you drew from?

At first, I was really into west coast gangster music. That’s what was bigger when I was young. Like NWA, DJ Quik and Warren G. As I got older and got into middle school, I got more into the lyrical [aspect], like Nas. And I was always into LL Cool J. I saw emceeing as like a craft.

Sweetest Fruit – Baraka Blue (Feat. Mos Def)[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/4035975″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=0062ff” width=”100%” height=”81″ ]

When do you feel you grew into the artist you are now, going from the mainstream scene to more of an independent artist?

That was like 8th grade or 9th grade. I got introduced into the local hip-hop scene in Seattle, which is pretty vibrant. It had a lot people from different cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicities coming together. It was very different from what you saw on TV. It was very “conscious” [with] a community vibe. It was very diverse, with everybody coming together and talking about issues that affected the community. I really got into that whole scene. That was high school, and high school was kind of a defining factor for me. We were just all about making music, every house party we went to. It was the whole vibe.

Was this around the same time as the Seattle rock scene?

This was after that. Seattle grunge was early ‘90s. When I was coming up with hip-hop it was late ‘90s so it [had] kind of morphed into a whole new scene.
A lot of the cats I grew up with they’re still doing their thing. It’s kind of like a bubble. It’s really hard for Seattle artists to burst out of Seattle. The whole northwest is sort of a scene – Portland, Oregon [and] British Columbia. There are really talented artists but they don’t get a lot of love outside of the northwest, cause they’re not known. When you think of established hip-hop areas you think of the Bay area, LA, anywhere in the south, Houston, Atlanta, obviously NY, that’s the birthplace [of hip-hop]. In these places it’s like that’s where hip-hop is from, but Seattle doesn’t really fit into people’s minds.

How did you get involved with Remarkable Current?

I kind of went a different route. When I turned 20, I had a life changing experience. Things happened to me and I became Muslim. And I completely went away from the whole [hip-hop] scene. I couldn’t be in that environment and really wanted to practice the deen. I was still making music, though. I went in the studio every six months. I had some of those songs and shared them online. And through the grapevine, manager and founder of Remarkable Current, Anas Canon, really liked it and got in contact with me to do the album.

What was the process like for you in creating the Sound Heart album?*

Basically what happened is before I went down there [to the studio], Anas and Abdul Malek, the producers, sent me like 40 beats. I wrote the album, most of it, in three weeks. I wrote like 20 tracks, went down to the studio and recorded all the tracks in four days. Just recorded, ate and slept in the studio. It was a trip. That was the first time I met Anas and Abdul Malek, and we clicked. It was just a different vibe. They’re in the studio burning incense and making prayers in the studio. Usually, in a hip-hop studio it’s like 40 oz and rolling blunts. That’s what I was used to, so [this was different]. We just vibed. We were making music for the love of it, for our creator, to glorify The One.

What is the significance behind the Baraka Blue moniker?

Baraka means blessed. Blue is not only a color it’s a feeling, an emotion, a genre of music that was named after that emotion of blues. In the opening to Rumi’s Masnavi he says, “listen to the song of the reed how it tells a tale,” and then he explains the reed flute, when it’s played when the breath is blown into it, it sounds like its crying or yearning. And it’s a beautiful sadness, if you’ve heard a reed flute. Rumi was making a metaphor. He was saying this reed flute is crying because its been separated from the river bed, because the reeds grow on the river bed and then they’re cut. So he’s saying anything that’s been separated from where it belongs has this deep yearning for its homeland. But his point at the end of this is that human beings are reed flutes – we were cut from the riverbed of connection with Allah, that moment of creation where we’re with our Lord, and we’re here on planet earth, for a period of time to experience life. [Part of] the human experience is that people are yearning for Allah, for reunion with their Creator, regardless of how “wow’d” people may be or how distorted that yearning is, people will act out in different ways that may not resemble yearning. But the reality is that it’s the underpinning core of human beings.

So the “baraka blues” is the phrase that came to my mind to really encapsulate that whole feeling. It’s the baraka blues, the blessed blues. Ya’ feel me? It’s bittersweet, but if you know that feeling you know that it’s the best feeling even though it’s deeply sad. That’s why Rumi says, “give me a heart that’s torn, shred and shred.” He’s saying, I want my heart to be raw, to feel that, to just overpower me, because it’s really a beautiful feeling, and so that’s Baraka Blue. It’s just a reminder that we’re all manifestations in our specific way of the “baraka blues.”

How did a kid growing up with the hip-hop influences of Seattle get into Rumi?
I grew up in a very multicultural place, and that’s hip-hop, urban environment, and Seattle is very counter culture, the WTO riots, where corporations are kicked out, like a Berkley-esque bay vibe… My family was relatively liberal. If you asked my parents they would say we’re Christian, but we didn’t even have a Bible in our house. So my parents weren’t against it, but they very much let me do my thing. So I was involved in hip-hop, poetry and this whole vibe. We were studying different cultures… and hip-hop and Islam are very related. Rumi is just the best poet of all time, so I was reading him. People were just reading, that was the vibe, and it was very open minded, people were studying different religions, Buddhism, Rastafarism, Islam, that was just the vibe I grew up with, it was just this idea that there’s all paths to God.

Come as you Are – Baraka Blue[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/4035785″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=0062ff” width=”100%” height=”81″ ]

What do you want listeners to get from your music?
I should preface this by saying that one of the beautiful things one of my friends who is a painter, taught me – he said, “I don’t really dictate to people what their experience of my art should be. Everyone will get something different out of it and that’s cool. Some people wont even feel anything and that’s cool. Some people will be really moved by it and that’s cool. And some people on the spectrum will be this and that.”

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that. That’s the beautiful thing about art, it speaks to people on levels that are above logic. That being said, I think there are some underlying messages in my music. It’s a call to something higher, to get people to think. I’m not pushing an agenda. My music isn’t for a specific group of people. I found that with this album, people from all walks of life. I consider art to be a sacred kind of trust, as Rumi said, “I despise poetry for its sake.” He was the best poet of all time, but he wasn’t even a poet. He was just devoted to God and his poetry came out of that. That’s what I want my art to be, otherwise its just lip service.

*Download album for free HERE!

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More tunes on the Baraka Blue Soundcloud page