Music Review: “DAMN GENESIS” by BRIEL the Artist
DAMN GENESIS is born out of freedom and courage. It’s about reclaiming a voice that the world tries to box in and erase. It’s about raw honesty and unapologetic truth. It amazed me how fluid and beautifully chaotic this mixtape is, where everything happens all at once—hip hop bleeds into freestyle and jazz. It evolves and never stays in one place. It peels off layers and allows things to get messy. And in there, you get community, a collage of moments in reality. It doesn’t yell out queerness or Blackness. It shows you, gently, what it’s like to be embraced and loved gently, and to be talked to and held in a way that sees you for who you really are.
DAMN GENESIS is pure magic. It’s conscious and present, and it’s healing in a way that feels spiritual. “THE BLINDS” opens the mixtape and establishes a world of lawlessness and borderlessness. It’s not like anything you’ve heard before, but it’s BRIEL the artist—mesmerizing, unique, walking in the spaces in between, searching and trusting. Sonically, it depicts the image of a person being blindfolded while journeying through the unknown, and around them, there are the noises—some are intriguing, some are temptations—BRIEL’s smooth and highly addictive voice serves as a contrast, as the only thing that guides and establishes orders, and along as they sing, the landscape starts to make sense. “THE BLINDS” is about uncertainty and perhaps the seeking, but it’s also about intuition and embracing your true, authentic self. This message is being elevated and examined on a deeper level in “ATTENTION!,” where BRIEL guides you with their smooth voice that can melt your heart.
“CHEQUE” gets real about the frustration and the stresses. It talks about the cheeks, being overworked, and feeling trapped in an endless cycle. The track, like many others on the mixtape, isn’t about establishing a structure or offering a solution, but holding a space where these thoughts can be heard. “CHEQUE” hits hard because it speaks the truth that millions of Americans live in.
The landscape changes in “NAH NAH NAH” and “SITUATIONSHIP,” where BRIEL talks about temptations, excuses, disillusionment, and toxic relationships. The two introspective tracks both talk about recognizing the toxicity and choosing to walk away from it. It’s fascinating that “SITUATIONSHIP” features a dual POV in its storytelling, approaching the brokenness and the reality of brokenness with empathy, which makes the core theme of choosing to love oneself instead of trying to heal a broken soul even more powerful. It’s heartwrenching.
“LADIES SOONG” and “PRETTY” both feel like love letters about self-love and self-worth, while “SHOT ON ME” explores femininity and sexuality. It’s sexy, addictive, and seductive. It heals that part of you that wants to feel sexy and desired—and that’s power. In “LADIES SONG” and “PRETTY,” BRIEL taps into the role of the listeners’ protector (in a way), almost like a best friend coming to the rescue (“You love me through all my flaws, but I can’t show myself that at all), while all the insecurities and second-guessing, overthinking are out in the open in places like “Brown skin, should I brighten it? Monotone, should I lower it?”
Again, dual POV takes a central stage here. The non-linear narrative feels refreshing, not leaving any detail out in those messy encounters. It’s brutal because it’s real. Sometimes, the lyrics almost feel like a page from my own diary. T
