‘Sundial’ Review: Noname Shakes the Table

Noname occupies a rare space in modern hip-hop, a rapper with a fandom that consistently holds them to the fire about how effectively their political ideals are expressed and acted on in an industry packed with guys who couldn’t lose the adulation of their loyal constituents if they tried. The backlash following her announcement of a collaboration with Jay Electronica last month is rooted in her career as a rapper and activist whose iconoclastic anti-capitalism is a relief in a field of coin-counting armchair A&Rs. This quality is also the source of negative attention she receives while criticizing Beyoncé’s wealth or J. Cole’s chauvinism. The Chicago star was accused of platforming antisemitism with an Electronica guest spot on her new song “Balloons” by people who wanted to know why someone committed to undoing and preventing harm would align themselves with an artist who once called himself “Jaydolf Spitler.” First, Noname wondered why songs from shooters and rapists get passes, a reasonable question weaponized as a deflection. Then, she hinted at a motive: “Maybe I purposely [sic] did a song wit jay elect to alienate my white fans.” It echoes ideas expressed in a since-deleted Instagram post and expounded on in her new album Sundial: “One of the biggest mistakes I believe we’ve made in our struggle towards liberation in this country is allowing white America unfiltered access to our entire culture.”

Sundial stands at the intersection of art, commerce, and activism, pondering the costs of pursuing cross purposes. Over 11 songs, Noname bristles at the business of selling pain, issuing challenges to her peers, her fans, and herself. “Balloons” is a harsh word about accolades for music about suffering: “In a land before land, monasteries, and Narcan / Casual white fans, who invented the voyeur? / Fascinated with mourning, they hope the trauma destroy her / Why everybody love a good sad song, a dark album / Like, tell me that yo homie dead / Yo mama dead, yo brother bled along the street / The corner where the Walgreens and White Castle is.” Electronica showing up right after that verse does seem like a jump scare for those who use rap as a window into experiences they’re not privy to and are geographically removed from. It’s intriguing to see Noname flick particulate radicalism at listeners who have come to these records for manicured outrage and hard-won inner-city uplift, showcasing how righteous anger often takes jagged shapes, and that even artists are occasionally complicit: “She’s just another artist selling trauma to her fan base.” Electronica’s bars, which denounce “fuckboy 85ers” and salute the Nation of Islam’s Minister Louis Farrakhan, certainly nail her goal of rattling listeners; if you came in uncomfortable with his politics, you will leave with the same impression.

The structure of the album will be familiar to fans of 2016’s Telefone and 2018’s Room 25; mellifluous, live-sounding grooves soften coarse points about fame, beauty, wealth, and oppression. But the blend of sweet sonics and thorny ideas bears a slight resemblance to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, periodically pulling the camera back from the previous album’s anguished narratives to get under the listener’s skin about experiences of sociopolitical injustice that often shape rappers’ worldviews. Thickets of poetic fantasy, emotional distress, and healthy suspicion are smoothed by Noname’s delivery, whether she’s luxuriating in carnal exploits or flambéing politicians for neglect of their duties. Halfway through the first verse of the gospel-rap confection “Hold Me Down,” spitfire raps are served with a lazy, melodic lilt — “Indoctrinate people slow / Incentivize money flow / The government got a hold / On everything, love!” — that reflects the machine-like precision of the systems the song is unpacking. She does it again on “Potentially the Interlude,” singing, “If you were just a little bit more pretty / Wrote a little bit like Kenny / You would have a life worth living / You would be a happy one” with a faint deadpan relaying profound disinterest in the major-label rat race. Her vocals are informed by her history with slam poetry just as the wrath in songs like “Hold Me Down” and “Afro Futurism” — “So so tempting to add sentence to sentence / This verse could run on three-fifths a human / Knew cats that did ten” — is sourced by her Noname Book Club’s work in getting political texts into the hands of incarcerated readers, and the abundance of pillowy bass lines and lively horn blasts puts Sundial in the same lineage of sonically lush, spiritually exhausted Chicago hip-hop as notable records from Chance the Rapper, Saba, and Common.

The album is most affecting when Noname unfurls introverted, self-aware yarns about relationships and professional struggles. “Beauty Supply” peruses the aisles of the titular shop, trying to square a desire to support Black businesses with a fear that what she’s really buying into is adherence to narrow standards for how Black women should present themselves in public: “I just wanna be the love of my life / Set aside my own standard and really demand hers / Silly and absurd wearing a fur cap, wig hat / And then preach I love everything Black.” Revisiting a nasty breakup in “Toxic,” Noname accentuates the shift in her mindset in the five years since the last album. Where Room 25’s “Window” closes with appreciation for an ex-lover in spite of the problems they caused, “Toxic” airs grievances before inviting the subject of the song to fuck off for life: “I’m like his little secret under the rug / Like, I could almost be wifey, but / I ain’t light-skinned enough / Quiet as kept, yo dick is mid / Quiet as kept, I don’t want yo kid.” This is the rapper who fried J. Cole in 70 seconds flat on “Song 33.” She surfaces again on “Namesake,” an old-school rap jam that feels like the album’s centerpiece, bobbing and weaving through identity and oppression like the last album’s closer, “No Name.”

It’s rare for an artist to craft an album that feels like a microcosm of their career. You see every side of her artistry, from the romanticism of Telefone’s “All I Need” to the ferocious performance and politics of Room 25’s “Blaxploitation.” It’s not just the celebrity talk that gets her flamed online but also the socialist praxis that endears her to people who interrogate her intentions whenever she’s in the wrong. “Namesake” sees celebrity worship as an enemy to the fairer distribution of wealth and fussy corporate displays of solidarity as pageantry for big business, the goal being to sell you things and keep you complacent, no matter how life-affirming and beautiful a display it is or how many beloved figures are attached. Noname says people, even her, talk a big game then fold in the presence of money, but what the song may be remembered for is the closing stretch where she says, “I ain’t fucking with the NFL or Jay-Z” before working through a list of Super Bowl halftime show performers including Kendrick, Beyoncé, and Rihanna, suggesting that doing business with the league is enlisting yourself to service in patriotic propaganda.

The message might not generate too many new converts. Noname says “All that ‘eat the rich,’ ‘tax the rich’ / Y’all ain’t really ’bout that shit / Bitch, if you want some money / You can say that / You deserve the payback,” but a lot of people have given up on ethical consumption. Still, it’s refreshing to see someone push back against corporate interests in hip-hop and meditate on the fast business moves that undercut anti-racist protests at NFL games and initiated the stream of memorable performances that garnered attention for the league but didn’t radically change its ways. In the end, Noname adds herself to the list of names in “Namesake,” kicking herself for playing Coachella after she said that she wouldn’t, because she needed the money. She’s within reach of the criticisms Sundial delivers; she’s often their main target. “We, too, can cause harm,” “Hold Me Down” warns. Opener “Black Mirror” leads with a list of contradictions: “She’s a shadow walker, moon stalker, Black author / Librarian, contrarian.” The album’s provocations seem designed to inspire people to either think intently or just buzz off, and the play doesn’t always go as planned. Stir the pot, get a splash. Sundial aspires to more than that, though. The end goal is simply liberation.