Listen to “Rainforest” by Noname

Over the past few years, Noname has used Twitter to document her process of political radicalization, publicly rejecting her old views and becoming firmly anti-capitalist. She now uses the platform to share reading lists and support leftist organizing. Ahead of the release of her new single, “Rainforest,” she tweeted that she wasn’t selling merch, instead suggesting donations to Noname’s Book Club, an online community dedicated to uplifting authors of color and donating books to people who are incarcerated.

The song, her first since last year’s “Song 33,” is a realization of her radical spirit. It weaves a clear-eyed rejection of capitalism with a poetic yearning for love and vulnerability. She masterfully shifts between the personal (“How you lemonade all your sadness when you openin’ up?”) and the societal (“Only animal that ravage everything in its path/They turned a natural resource into a bundle of cash”), implicitly connecting billionaires’ extraction of the planet’s natural resources with the sadness she carries as an individual forced to make money to survive. Packed with warmth and insight, the short song propels her knotty lyricism forward with a crackling drum beat and jazzy instrumental. Noname makes revolution irresistible by asking the listener to imagine how beautiful it would be to live in a world that doesn’t require their pain.