Blood Money by alya isha

"You say you want your blood money
I ain’t got no blood money for you
You say you want your blood money
But we be coming for our blood"

--alya isha, "Blood Money"

Welcome to the Global Urban Jazz Funk era, brought to you by South London Soulstress, poet and organiser alya isha. With the hardest chorus of 2024, "Blood Money" raises a fist in the air, refusing to be part of a system that imprisons us all, whilst recognising each of our roles in upholding it. It's a call for reparations, for redistribution, and for the communal empowerment of our people - of our family - across the globe, where the oppressor-class essence of language becomes a sword wielded by the oppressed, swaying and swaggering to dangerous rhythms.

Having risen to prominence with the 2023 single "diaSpoRia", alya isha comes out blazing on "Blood Money" - all tight phrases and clipped diction over incendiary production. It's the sound of revolutionary power, liberation, a bill come due for centuries of colonization, of extraction, of homogenization, of hegemony, of buried bodies and spirits - and it grooves.

South-London soulstress, poet and multi-instrumentalist, alya isha pioneers ‘Nu Earth Groove’ music: Global Urban Bassy Jazz Funk for a new world.

Born and raised in Japan, moving to Tooting, London and then Santiago de Cuba before returning to Brixton; the British, Indian-Mauritian and Swiss artist takes inspiration from her roots; adding her trademark hard-hitting political lyricism.