Restoring house music as a form of protest, ‘Long Overdue: The Sound Of A Revolution’ is the title of the first mixtape and creative work from Renee Thompson, a new Canadian artist known as SeeMeNot.
Released via her Soundcloud page, ‘Long Overdue’ features SeeMeNot singing a cappella over a 6-track mix from DJ Oliver Baptiste. Aside from the opening intro (which is a cover of the Ray Charles song “A Childhood”), all lyrics on the mixtape are written by Renee, and laid over beats that flow effortlessly through deep, melodic, tribal & afro house, and intertwined with powerful excerpts of speeches representing protest & hope.
Renee describes the project: “Long Overdue: The Sound Of A Revolution is a tribute to Black Lives Matter and a musical documentary of our journey as Black people from Fight to Flight. I collaborated with Oliver Baptiste – a long and close friend and club DJ residing in South Africa – to put this amazing house set together which to me was an homage to our ancestors and our way of – like they did – singing and making music to cope.”
A highly successful model from her early teens, in 2009, Renee suddenly found it hard to find work as a model in New York after appearing in the documentary The Colour of Beauty, a short exposé bringing to light the pervasive structural racism affecting the casting of Black models. During this turbulent period, music became Renee’s coping mechanism and vehicle for self-expression. She began writing songs in a music studio in Yonkers, New York alongside a few friends who had suffered the same fate.
As SeeMeNot, Renee wants to redefine what it is to a Black female artist – fashion’s loss will be music’s gain. Look out for the release of her first singles following the mixtape: in September (‘Borderline’, featuring a remix from Roman Flugel) and October (‘Chez Renee’, remixed by Joe Goddard).
