Rhythm, Race and Reckoning

It’s a disarming way to begin a protest track — not with fury or fire, but with a flicker. Image — Baltimore-born, now based in London — uses Unapologetically Black to do what good rap does: not shout over the noise, but cut through it. Across just over three minutes, he delivers something closer to a sermon than a song, though never in a way that feels self-righteous or overdone. It’s reflective, lyrical, and laced with a frustration that never tips into performance. There’s a grounded clarity in both tone and intention — a man thinking aloud, with the mic left on.

From the first verse, there’s an intellectual density that’s easy to miss if you’re not listening closely. He plays with language in ways that echo spoken word traditions, slipping into double meanings, enjambement, even parody. The line —

— isn’t just clever; it’s a full-bodied historical pivot in twelve syllables. The homonymic play between “outstanding” and “out standing” collapses time, placing contemporary respectability politics beside chattel slavery in a line that’s both painfully funny and structurally elegant. There’s a scholar’s sensibility in that — but the kind of scholar who smokes his zoot while quoting Plato, who knows the difference between rapping well and having something to say.

What follows is a series of reflections that rarely rest. They move. Rapidly. Ideas tumble over one another, propelled by a flow that never once loses control. There’s urgency, yes — but he doesn't yell. Image knows how to hold a bar just long enough to make it land, then move on. He doesn’t get stuck. And it’s this refusal to linger that gives the track its momentum. Police violence, token protest culture, generational trauma, educational reform — it’s all here, not as slogans, but as lived concerns.

One thing I appreciated, perhaps more than I expected, was the precision of the lyricism. There’s a confidence in how Image lets metaphors do their work, trusting the listener to keep up without over-explaining. The line —

— does in nine words what a less-skilled writer might take a paragraph to attempt: it critiques media representation, references a legacy Black publication, and flips the metaphor of violence (“magazines” as both print and ammunition) in a way that is both subtle and startling. It’s this kind of double-coded syntax that pricked my ears. There’s a literary hand at work here, one that knows how to compress meaning without flattening it.

The track’s production is equally restrained — the beat serves the bars, not the other way around. There’s no gaudy bassline or overproduced hook. It’s stripped back, even a little lo-fi, which places Image’s voice exactly where it needs to be: front and centre, firm and unadorned.

By the final chorus — “All my Black beautiful people show me a smile” — the refrain feels earned. Not sentimental, but necessary. And again, he avoids the trap of neat resolution. There’s no crescendo, no euphoric finish. Just a statement of being. A refusal to collapse under pressure.

I've listened to Unapologetically Black several times while putting this article together, and it took me a fair few tries to catch all the details, cleverly-folded puns and nuanced cultural references. And with that, I feel the shape of the thing more clearly. It’s a rap song, but it lands like a call to rise.

In a moment where the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been co-opted by brands, diluted in hashtags, and entangled in spectacle, it’s a relief — and a quiet revelation — to hear a voice that resists simplification. Image doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He just keeps asking the questions. And perhaps that, more than anything else, is what makes this track resonate so deeply: its commitment to the artist's truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable and unresolved.