Kellee Maize is a pagan hip-hop artist.
I love the genre shift – as mentioned, I don’t always trend
towards folksy guitar stylings, so I’m predisposed to pagan artists
who break that mold. Her music relates to club and dance genres with
the beats and actual music, while the lyrics wouldn’t be out of
place at any pagan festival.
The music is electronic, for the most
part (I love my beepy sounds), with chimes and hand claps and more
standard instruments buried in among the synth. It’s very catchy,
and easy to bop along to, which is another good point. It does start
to sound the same when you listen to too much of it at once, but when
thrown in with other pagan mixes, it’s a refreshing breather. I
love, love, love dance music, so it’s hard for me to get tired of
it. Kellee Maize seems to find the same spiritual elements in dancing
– even in clubs – that I do, and I really connect through that
where I have trouble with other artists.
This allows me to forgive her for the
one thing throughout the first album (Aligned Archetypes)
that drives me absolutely out of my mind – there’s a twenty
second or so piece at the end of some tracks that is completely
disconnected with the rest of the songs. Sometimes it accapella
singing, sometimes it’s just spoken word poetry, but it completely
breaks the rhythm, and frequently the topic is only tangentially
related to the song, or not at all. It’s like a whole different
song, in a different style, buried in bits and pieces throughout the
album. That might be your thing, but it makes me twitch. Not enough
to make me stop enjoying everything else, fortunately.
The lyrics themselves are unabashedly
democratic on pagan topics. It sometimes crosses into slightly fluffy
all-is-light-and-love territory, but so confidently that it makes me
feel a little ashamed for being self-conscious about it. Crystal
children, higher consciousness, past lives, auras, third eyes,
chakras, stones, Isis, Goddess, God, psychic powers, karma,
astrology, spellwork – it’s all fair game. That alone marks her
apart; these songs aren’t always focused on one pagan thing, but
rather on an emotional topic and the rest comes intertwined with
writing about it. It makes all the rest seem more naturally part of
life, and less forced than otherwise.
I really like her, anyway. Third Eye
and Friday Night Flu are probably my favorites, but feel free to
check out the rest! I’m not as familiar with the other singles and albums she’s
released, but I have liked what I heard, so don’t expect any
significant style changes from one to the other.
On a positive note, she's freely available on Jamendo (creative commons licensed music), though you can also buy her music from Amazon. The link at the top goes to the Jamendo site, so you can listen or download whatever you like without gambling on your hard-earned pocket-change.
Blessed Be!
Pennanti
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