by Maria Bobbitt-Chertock (@mariab4christ)
I’d been feeling deprived of a certain kind of pop music, the kind that pulls at your chest and makes you want to sprint through cemeteries in high heels. I missed music that infects you with its drama. Then I came across ROSETTA.
ROSETTA is Minneapolis-based poet-organizer Dua Saleh’s sophomore EP. Named after the Black queer godmother of rock-n-roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, it’s deeply invested in Black queer desire as the thing that inspires both the music and the mythology of the artist. Saleh’s lyrics share Sister Rosetta’s interest in heaven, hell, and the natural world, but they differ in their alliteration, abundant detail, and blood-soaked, moonlit imagery. They thrive in mood and character. They build elaborate worlds in seconds.
The story begins with an innuendo-laden line: “I’ve been bleeding out the cheek / Dripping on my seat.” Immediately, we come face-to-face with desire confounded with a wound, desire in collusion with destruction, desire somewhat sinister. This is our introduction to ROSETTA. Then characters come into focus, and with them, more monstrous imagery. Saleh, who is nonbinary, told them. that their music satirizes religious bigotry, and one way it achieves this is by playing with the queer villain trope. So ROSETTA’s first track ends with Saleh’s voice murmuring over a sour plucked sample, “Lungs thin, green limbs / Tearing up this new skin.” Whose green limbs? Whose new skin? Either the speaker or their lover or both take on this green, bloodthirsty demon-body. Their mutual attraction itself is monstrous, but the lyrics don’t pass judgment on this. A patch of noise ends the track.
Then “Umbrellar” begins. This stand-out track is upbeat and pop-y, but still grounded in Saleh’s lyricism and producer Psymun’s understated, oft-detuned sonic palette. It starts with bright bells, then peaks halfway through as Saleh unleashes a river of consonants in ode to their broom-riding, fire-breathing lover. It cuts off too soon, at only two and half minutes, after another eerie double entendre: “When she brought her wand out, / I knew I had lost our deal.”
Saleh’s alter-ego Lucifer LaBelle steps in for “Hellbound.” LaBelle is a trans pop-star incarnation of Hades, endowed with a fatal allure. He taunts his fans and lovers, “pumping all this trauma to [their] veins,” then says, “I ain’t even want him, why he bow down?” The song hints at how vulnerability bolsters the artist’s mystique (and vice-versa) and how queer desire, in all its structurally-imposed vulnerability, often gathers in the shadows.
The EP’s final track forgoes the theatrics we’ve now come to expect and instead oscillates between romantic phrases and recollections of Saleh’s more mundane experiences with poverty. The lyrics recall empty gas tanks and cup noodle dinners, then without warning lament “silver on a river” over and over like a spell. It’s an unexpected but provocative departure from the world of the previous five songs.
ROSETTA is an exciting listen and still, excitingly, just the beginning. Dua Saleh has a powerful vision, and they’ve built so much in so little time. I look forward to seeing what they can do with more.