Aja Monet is a chronicler, a Brooklyn griot, a freedom fighter with fire in her veins and a way with words that hits you like a sucker punch. Deftly paced, oozing gravitas as well as melodrama, Monet's spoken word poems variously thrill, challenge seduce and bring joy. Taking the baton from such hallowed Nuyorican performance poets as Dana Bryant, who was handed it in turn by the likes of The Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, Monet tells of everything from black resistance and liberation to the redeeming power of love across 13 tracks, in ways both accessible and fabulously abstract.

Teaming up with acclaimed trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah/Christian Scott and a band including Grammy-nominated djembe player Weedie Braimah (currently featuring in Michael League's Bokanté ensemble) and Marcus 'grandson of Roy Haynes' Gilmore on drums is an inspired move. Scott's freeform shrieks and mighty New Orleans atmospherics give dragon's wings to tracks such as the dark and trembling 'The Devil You Know', a poem decrying hypocrisy and corporate greed, and strafes golden rays through 'Give Thanks', a tune made the more fragile by bluesman Lonnie Holley's creaky outsider vocals. Then there's the moving, whip smart, lead single 'Castaway', piano-dappled by Samora Pinderhughes, worth the price of the recording alone. A vital new voice, then, and an inevitable 2023 ‘Best Of’.