Skip to content

Black Gold drops before the Olympics

A hip-hop album inspired by Tommy Smith's gold medal and Black Power salute
21st July 2021

    ‘Black Gold’, a seven track hip-hop album by XYM (aka WriterMosaic‘s Jonny Wright), launched recently ahead of the Olympics in Japan, is inspired by the gold medal won by African American athlete Tommy Smith, and his subsequent Black power salute, at the Mexico 1968 Olympics. The timely album addresses themes of racial injustice and social inequality, still all too prevalent in the run up to a new Olympics, more than fifty years later. Wright says, ‘It also explores what it means to be an artist today in a world where Black art, but not the artists themselves, is embraced and commodified and what striving for that online success can do to your mental health in real life.’ He hopes that it is ‘a lyrical and sonic embodiment of pure Black Boy Joy’. The album is produced by the hip-hop duo Mutual Soundz.

    https://xymyorkrapper.bandcamp.com/album/black-gold

    Anna Freud at the Freud Museum

    An appreciation of Anna Freud's pioneering work as a child psychologist and her place in the Freud Museum, London

    The rainy day has come

    What are Caribbean nations owed with the rise of extreme weather events?

    The seven lamps of writing

    I write because I am, and I write because I am not

    The Jollof House Party Opera

    A joyful, multisensory feast that immerses audiences as active participants in a bustling restaurant kitchen

    Kerry James Marshall: The Histories

    Kerry James Marshall's paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts preserve the enigma of African Americans whilst humanising them

    Steve

    The film adaptation of Max Porter's novella Shy is not a story about middle-class adults rescuing troubled youth; the grown-ups aren’t okay

    video

    Preaching

    'Preaching': A new poem by the T.S.Eliot Prize-winning poet Roger Robinson, from his forthcoming New and Selected Poems (Bloomsbury in 2026).

    video

    Walking in the Wake

    Walking in the Wake was produced for the Estuary Festival (2021) in collaboration with Elsa James, Dubmorphology and Michael McMillan who meditates on the River Thames as we follow black pilgrims traversing sites of Empire.

    Illuminating, in-depth conversations between writers.

    Spotify
    Apple Podcasts
    Amazon Music
    YouTube
    Other apps
    What we leave we carry, The series that tells the true-life stories of migration to the UK.

    The series that tells the true-life stories of migration to the UK.

    Spotify
    Apple Podcasts
    Amazon Music
    YouTube
    Other apps
    Search