Think back with me to a day in October 2017. A peaceful melting pot of ordinary New York City train-riders was disrupted by a drunk and disorderly racist yelling slurs at any and every person of color in sight. That is, until one brown-skinned hero stepped up and threw a bowl of hot soup right in his face.

That hero was the one, the only, Princess Nokia.

And she wasn’t having it because Princess Nokia proudly reps her ancestry of black, Latina, and Native American cultures, especially when it comes to racists who’d step against all three. With centuries of oppression traced through every part of her lineage, she’s made two words a personal mission in both her daily life and her music: “NOT TODAY.”

“Brujas” (Spanish for “witches”) is Princess Nokia’s anthem to that ancestry, and a stand against the erasure, disrespect, exoticization, and gentrification of the sacred faiths of her people.

In the opening cinematic, a circle of women sing thanks to the blue-robed figure representing Yemaya, an ocean orisha in the Yoruba religion, among others. Later, they deliver offerings to Yemaya’s yellow-robed sister of fertility, Oshun. But otherwise, most of the video is a brazen reclamation of two wildly successful, mainstream productions especially beloved by women of color for at least acknowledging our place in witchcraft and spiritualism: “The Craft” and “American Horror Story.” Princess Nokia and HER coven are here for what’s ours.

I’d expect nothing less from a Afro-Latina with a penchant for pelting bad energy with the nearest concoction. All hail Princess Nokia, the Supreme.

Blessed be.

𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“I’m that Black a-Rican bruja straight out from the Yoruba
And my people come from Africa diaspora, Cuba
And you mix that Arawak, that original people
I’m that Black Native American, I vanquish all evil”

𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 | 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬