Living in an age where rage is a currency, where anything and everything is a financial stressor, and where our political machine’s main function is to sow division, clinging to positive platitudes like “Things will get better!” or “Just hold out hope!” can feel like an expression of willful ignorance, or at best, stupid naivety. It’s hard, nearly impossible, to remain hopeful in such uncertain times; a feeling encapsulated in the fifth album from Joy Oladokun (they/she), fittingly titled Hope is a Heavy Thing.
The Arizona-born singer-songwriter’s career has burgeoned from her pensive lyricism, a marriage of the personal and political: their Nigerian-Christian upbringing as a queer person in their 2019 single “Sunday”; the unique pain of the African-American experience in the piano-led pandemic anthem “Who Do I Turn To?”; or her dependence on self-medication in “Drugs.”
Oladokun, now 34 years old, has built a reputation as an adept wordsmith, vulnerably positioning herself as a mouthpiece for her generation’s overwhelming discontent with where the world is going. Negativity is abundant, and apathy is its easiest antidote, so perhaps hope is a heavy thing.
Across their discography, Oladokun is a genre-defier, their work an amalgamation of pop, soul, and rock. Yet they are a folk artist to their core, borrowing from the genre’s tradition of narrative-driven storytelling and social realism as a bridge connecting Oladokun’s lived reality with the collective struggles of her audience.
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Oladokun wants to make one thing clear, however: We shouldn’t mistake their emotional clarity for emotional consistency. Hope is a complex, often contradictory emotion to bear. It can find expression in money-chasing (“if we’re burning anyway / might as well get paid / better get your paper made” in “TOGIAIM”) or exposure therapy (“you gotta feel your hunger / you gotta own your shame / if you don’t heal your wounds well... / they’ll keep you in place” in “Toothache”) or “doomsday dancing” (“Easy Company”).
Through her revealing lyrics written over sparse instrumentation, Oladokun captures the messiness of existing within contradictions in an incongruous world.
This deep dissatisfaction with systemic forces is nothing new, and Oladokun doesn’t pretend it is. Comparisons to Tracy Chapman—a fellow Black folk icon—are natural; both use folk not just as a genre, but as a vehicle for documenting the personal consequences of political realities.
Musical roots run equally deep throughout the record. The guitar riffs on “Easy Company” pay tribute to King Sunny Adé’s Jùjú music, while direct nods to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti in “Easy Company” (“grandfather kuti once told me / ‘water get no enemy’”) channel the Yoruba proverb behind his 1975 track. On “Zombie,” Oladokun again invokes Kuti, who portrayed Nigerian soldiers as zombies to critique the military’s enforced obedience (“Zombie wey na one way”). She repurposes his image to articulate her own alienation: “I feel like I’m wandering.”
Oladokun, now 34 years old, has built a reputation as an adept wordsmith, vulnerably positioning herself as a mouthpiece for her generation’s overwhelming discontent with where the world is going.
Zombie mythology is rooted in Haitian Vodou folklore, with many tales featuring people reanimated out of death by sorcerers, with no free will of their own. Fear of zombification was exploited by plantation owners wanting to deter enslaved people from taking their own lives; their attempts at deterrence were motivated not by empathy, but by “property” preservation.
These themes of powerlessness and alienation converge in her own lived experience, as expressed through her lyrics: feeling “locked out of heaven but too broken for earth,” “stuck somewhere in between”: a child of immigrants, a queer person in the church, and a Black artist making folk music in America.
Despite Oladokun’s gift of enmeshing the collective and individual, her album’s weakest moments arise when they focus on the interpersonal. While it’s unfair to expect musicians to divulge their trauma in a bid for authenticity, songs like “Don’t Call Me Baby!” and “Kind” can feel too abstract or flat, with some lines devolving into the empty platitudes: “you haven’t been as sweet as you used to be / and burning bridges down isn’t new to me / they say that if it hurts you should set it free.”
But Oladokun’s vocal production and performance deserve their own flowers. She is a master of layering, call-and-response, and rich harmonization, a skill set showcased brilliantly on “Die Young.” Oladokun told Billboard in 2020 that honing production was a crucial part of their musical evolution, and that technical growth pays massive dividends here.
The album’s standout track, “Sage” (featuring Nigerian singer-songwriter Adekunle Gold), blends African rhythms with folk. Burning incense becomes not just a cleansing ritual, but a tool of liberation: “The smoke from my sage says go,” they sing. Oladokun cleverly turns the xenophobic language historically weaponized against Black people back on the forces—intrusive thoughts, life’s monotony—weighing them down: “go back to where you came from / you’ve already stayed too long.”
Hope Is a Heavy Thing concludes with “Time Is A River,” again referencing Kuti’s reverence for water. Rather than desperately fighting time’s forward pull, Oladokun surrenders control: “que será será / let the water through.” It’s a moment of optimistic nihilism that transforms powerlessness into freedom. She continues: “as the days go on / peace will be renewed / oh, time is a river / let it carry you.”
Across 12 tracks, Oladokun offers a vital reminder: Hope is a heavy thing, but hopelessness is far heavier.
Timi Sotire is a writer, journalist, and music enthusiast from London, currently residing in New York. She has a master’s degree in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University.
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