Face it, not many artists, much less rappers, would front their hard lessons on abortion in a lead single. And yet Mariah Parker, a.k.a. Linqua Franqa, broke onto the world stage last week with “Eight Weeks,” one of the toughest talks from her debut EP last year. The breezy soul setting belies the angst underneath—is any unborn child just a growing mass of cells, or a lost opportunity for a child without a voice? In the video, we watch Parker reenact the most mundane moments of that harrowing chapter of her life: she lounges on the bed with her cat, works on homework, chats with her mom, and lies awake in the dead of night. Directed by her friend and hip-hop compatriot Dope Knife, this is Linqua Franqa’s real talk mantra in motion.
When I talked with Parker last year, she told me that she wrote “Eight Weeks” to help de-stigmatize conversations on abortion. (The question that prompted that answer was a tricky one to type, precisely because of that stigma.) “There were people I loved who had gone through this before me, and I was afraid to ask them for help because they’d never told me,” she said. “I don’t want that for anyone.” Here’s hoping that Linqua Franqa can clear the air for women across the country when her upcoming LP, Model Minority, launches on HHBTM in February.
Model Minority is out Feb. 23. Pre-orders are available here.
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