When Ibeyi announced their new album Spell 31, they revealed that it'll include a re-imagining of Black Flag's "Rise Above" featuring BERWYN. The album's due out next week (5/6) via XL, and they've now shared that track. Similar to Dirty Projectors' Rise Above album, "re-imagining" feels like a much more appropriate word than "cover." Other than the lyrics, nothing about this song resembles Black Flag's original, and BERWYN's rapped verse is an entirely new, original addition. Here's what Ibeyi's Lisa-Kaindé says:
We read the lyrics and we immediately felt their relevance to how we felt about the world in its current state. We got to work on the melody and had the full song done in 5 minutes. Jorja Smith heard the track and told us we had to get BERWYN on the song. We had him by the studio to listen to the full album. I left to make tea, upon returning to the studio BERWYN had already written his verse for “Rise Above,” before he had even finished listening to the album. We knew we had something special, what a gift!