We are Scorpio
We Are Scorpio
Javotti Media
OUT NOW
CONTACT:
ROSIE BOYD // PUBLICIST
LYDIA KRUMPER // PUBLICIST
To fully hear the Black punk poetics of We Are Scorpio—a new collaborative music project featuring award-winning poet jessica Care moore and prolific performer Steffanie Christi'an—you must first cross the river and walk through the city of Detroit. Here is where they join a long line of women—Aretha Franklin, Betty Carter, and Alice Coltrane among them—who spoke truth with force across genre and gendered borders. More than the fact that their self-titled debut album, We Are Scorpio, amplifies the aesthetic genealogies of this mid-western musical Mecca, is the fact that the album haunts its witnesses with the sonic ghosts of marvels like A Band Called Death and John Lee Hooker–Black rock and blues legends who carefully crafted and localized their sound for knowing Michigan audiences. Poetry, rhyme, and regional reason are the formula, and We Are Scorpio positions themselves alongside the city’s renowned vocalists and musicians while yielding a Black femme punk feel.
In the book Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll Maureen Mahon offers instructions for a conscious listening practice, “I want to invite readers to listen to rock and roll with an awareness of the presence of African American women, because if we listen to and hear the music in a different way…it will be easier to include African American women in the grand narrative of rock and roll.” We Are Scorpio offers a performative testimony of Mahon’s charge. It is no coincidence that at the intersection of Mahon’s book and the words it carries throughout its chapters is an explanation of how the collaboration of We Are Scorpio emerged.
Understanding the need for commemoration and intentional remembering, jessica Care moore set the stage for this album decades ago when she institutionalized the Black Women Rock (BWR) concert series. "This record is an homage to the undeniable pioneers of rock and roll music, Black women,” moore says. “It’s mind-blowing how I’ve been producing Black Women Rock, aka Daughters of Betty, for 20 years, and there are still not enough stages, radio play, or support for contemporary Black women artists in the rock genre. We Are Scorpio isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to this industry. It’s been a long time commitment to build an institution to support my sisters who do this work. Steffanie is such a force. That’s what this project is about. It's reclaiming what was always ours in the first place."
moore took the honor a step further when she returned to Detroit after living and developing the series between the cities of Brooklyn and Atlanta. She sought out the next generation of Black women rockers to be part of a homegrown annual musical celebration in honor of Betty Davis. The first mission was to find local talent that fit the BWR ethos. In the process, she discovered a fellow Detroiter in Tina Turner’s likeness—Steffanie Christi'an. Upon meeting and hearing Steffanie Christi'an, it was clear why Christi'an had become a crowd favorite and regular performer at the show. And unsurprising that Christi'an sang at the Aretha Franklin Memorial service alongside some of the greatest voices in music after performing with BWR for several years. Herein lies a perfect match and, a few years later, a solid self-titled album. “We Are Scorpio is not just an album or manufactured music group, it is a movement!” Christi’an shares. “jessica and I have reveled at the opportunity to create this work, and we couldn’t be prouder. Every single track on this record hits you in all the right places. This album is about taking our power back. It is raw, honest, and Black AF. There are no other artists right now that capture the energy and fire that we bring together. We aren’t trying to be or sound like anyone else, and that’s the whole point.”
Performing with jessica as a vocalist since 2007, Christi’an was clear that the two of them always wanted to record together, but the stars didn’t align. “We were in lockdown from Covid. Some of the songs jess had written and performed before we even met,” Christi’an recalls. “We collaborated on four new tracks on the record produced by Wayne Gerard. Our goal was to show a different version of women you constantly see on television, the internet, and hear on the radio.”
Part of this vision required assembling some of the most seasoned musicians in the game. Divinity Roxx, who began her globally recognized career as a bassist, touring with the accomplished Victor Wooten for five years, is one of them. Roxx is most recognized as the bassist and musical director of Beyoncé’s all-girl band between 2006 and 2011. Militia Vox, who appears on the “Scorpio,” is an award-winning solo artist, frontwoman of all-girl heavy metal collective Judas Priestess, and fellow touring artist with Daughters of Betty/Black Women Rock! "When jess and I had decided to move forward with the album, she said she wanted to make a song about Scorpios. She sent me a voice message with the hook. I added a bit for the bridge, and Wayne produced a dope track. We knew we wanted to include Militia Vox on the album, and that song was a perfect collaboration. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the record," Christi’an said.
Another major player in the group's sound is Maurice “Mobetta” Brown. His critically acclaimed debut, HIP TO BOP, recorded in New Orleans, foreshadowed Brown’s unique talent for creating fresh bop-inflected jazz with an urban pulse. Maurice “Mobetta” Brown is an innovative musical mastermind who “lights a fire under traditional jazz, adds sonic brass to rock n' roll, and creatively pushes the production envelope in hip-hop.” Finally, adding more grit and grime to the textured album is Sada Baby, whose featured appearance on “I’m from Detroit” represents Detroit’s unyielding talent pool. "'I’m From Detroit' is a quintessential homage to our city and experiences, the band adds. “Detroiters are a different breed, and that song captures it perfectly. It just made sense to have Sada Baby on the record. Talib put in a call, and we made some magic."
“I’m From Detroit” opens with a driving and intentionally mean rhythm, yelling three words that set the tone, “I’m from Detroit.” We Are Scorpio makes it clear that Black music, geography, and storytelling have the power to rearrange history through sound. “They own the rights to their own mythology.” “Rock & Roll Ni**a,” a title that reclaims the controversial racialized overtone of Patti Smith’s 1978 song, “Rock N Roll Ni**er,” brings these seemingly opposing forces—rock n’ roll and ni**as—home to a safe place where themes of critical consciousness, Black feminism, and artistic integrity render the racial dilemma of Smith’s song title, which Smith explains as a gesture that “redefined the word ni**er as being an artist-mutant that was going beyond gender,” a little more layered. Smith is regarded by many as the godmother of punk. The difference between Smith’s “Rock N Roll Ni**er” and We Are Scorpio’s “Rock & Roll Ni**a” is lived experience and embodiment—tales of potent ghetto fantasy.
Lyrically, the album contains stories, fables, and women-centered warnings—much like the original blues women who were the first to record Black popular music in America, We Are Scorpio brings forth the sound and smell of working-class funk coupled with a musical politic of refusal, as seen on “Quarterback”: "I would fuck you, but then I'd have to kill you.” The album doubles as a soundtrack for the dismantling of structural racist systems with songs like “Jim Crow” and mediocre and ungrateful lovers who failed to match and meet the duo’s emotional intensity in songs like “Coffee is a Drug.”
The granddaughters of punk have returned with a vengeance. The album exemplifies harmonious rage with roots in the silence of the pandemic. “I was home with err‘body else when I started writing these lyrics in the shower, singing them on my voice memo,” moore says. “I would send voice notes to Steff and the guitarist Wayne, who would go on to produce four of the ten songs we recorded. Now that the world has opened again, “Rock & Roll Ni**a” can be heard as evidence of a global period of private production and creative reflection.”
Echoes of Black Diamond Queens from the past and future live in the mind, body, and soul of jessica Care moore and Steffanie Christi’an. We Are Scorpio are coming for heads. If you can take the heat, jump into the mosh pit with all the other Rock ‘N’ Roll Ni**as. It’s imperative that we pause, head bang, and tune in.