Birth is said to signify a correction of the tangible desires present in life, the right to reflect, experience, and perfect matters concerning the flesh is its purpose. Sasa Juste’s “Birthright” is a sonic peregrination divulging a therapeutic approach to purging the female psychic in attempt to preserve the proliferaton of matriarchal figures.
Juste’s “Chrysalis” plays like an ode to all the juju mama’s navigating the complexities of life successfully by creating asylums in their homes to circumvent the depleting effects of society. The song is an oral recipe, “Crystal quartz, copper coiled, … chilling in my amethyst”; the lapis luzzli in her possession assist in tranquility and correspond with the instrumentation she employs on the offering. Never to exhausted from life to “throw ginger in smoothies”, the maintenance of her temple highlighted on the track is giving reverence above other components of her routine. The closing of the track is followed by the lovely Phylicia Rashad speaking on her assurance in the parenting ways of her mother and the perpetuation of those ideals. The interlude serves as a reinforcement of the Sasa’s diktat that mothers and traditions are worthy of preservation.
While “BirthRight” is best served in its entirety “Tell On you” emerges from the later end of the Lp and immediately becomes a stand out in terms of subject matter and intensity. Sasa announces “Daddy Imma Tell on you…” and proceeds to remove the veil from her personal life to expose molestation, “how you gonna wanna birth me and fuck me”. The dispiritedness is akin to Hov’s “where have you been” but the level of introspection and brutal honesty is reminiscent of Jean Grae’s “ My Story” ; yet the crassness Juste’s utilizes is unparallel to anything ever recorded.
“BirthRight” is a woman using her music in search of doing just as the title says, Birth… right. To sift through the disparaging happenings of life and birth a better one in a manner that she deems right. Sasa is done with the “bad juju” emanating from “pussy problems” and ops to return to the “waters” as she seeks to use her womb as a hungry mouth. It is her “Birth Right” to cannibalize all that life has presented her, and birth new opportunities via eggs fertilized by wisdom extracted from her experiences. The intrinsic wisdom that arrives by way of deading former perils that burden the sacred and delicate processes concerning maternity.
-Matthew Carroll