Review: Heems - Eat Pray Thug
By Sammi Nelson, Blogs Editor
[Megaforce; 2015]
Rating 3.5/5
Key Tracks: “Flag Shopping,” “Al Q8a,” “Patriot Act”
Queens-based rapper Himanshu Suri, known by the pseudonym Heems for his solo work, has released Eat Pray Thug, an album that is arguably the rapper’s masterpiece and possibly his last musical project.
Eat Pray Thug will have listeners chuckling from the MC’s witty quips one minute until the next, when their giggles dissolve into churning stomachs and welling eyes from the raw truth that Heems spits.
Heems has been a presence in the rap game since debuting alongside rapper Kool A.D. in the defunct group Das Racist. Kool A.D. left the outfit in 2012, and both musicians have since released their own solo projects.
Heems’ previous work includes mixtapes such as Nehru Jackets and Wild Water Kingdom, both of which feature themes of depression, addiction and racial inequality within their lyrics.
To say Eat Pray Thug has similar themes as its predecessing mixtapes is a laughable understatement. Heems explodes with powerful words and clever rhymes that recall his life in post-9/11 New York as a “brown man,” a term Heems has used for himself since his Das Racist raps.
Heems was born to Punjabi Indian parents in Queens. Over the last several years Heems has returned to his roots, both in a spiritual as well as in a musical sense. He unapologetically deconstructs the American dream and critiques the racism still plaguing the streets of New York and the country as a whole.
In “Flag Shopping,” which begins with an absolutely gnarly beat drop, Heems paints an image of what it was like for many marginalized citizens after 9/11, including his own family. With lyrics like, “We're going flag shopping / The kids are throwing stones / We complain but they ain't stopping / On your way to the top / And now they want you to stop / Your mama pray to god / But your dad'll lose his job,” Heems shows the examples of racism and racial profiling people with brown skin living in New York City have experienced. He elaborates the only solution for these families was to prove their American patriotism, but even that was never enough to stop hate crimes against them.
“Al Q8a” is another notable song with a critical message and cleverly devised lyrics. Heems opens with his memorable call of “Whaaaaaaaaa?” before he dives into self-confident claims like, “Who you know fresher than Heemy, riddle me that.” In the second verse, Heems gives a shout out: “This for Arabs in bodegas toting steel under the registers / And all illegal aliens, it’s them that never registered.”
At the very end of the song, Heems begins to chant “USA” repeatedly, allowing his mantra to dissolve with the song. Within the context of the track, the chant is enough to send chills racing up the listener’s spine and put a bad taste in their mouth the next time they encounter the term “USA.”
The finale “Patriot Act” is probably the most moving, heartbreaking and bone-chilling song on Eat Pray Thug. The outro for the album begins in the middle of the piece as Heems stops rapping and begins to speak, weaving a story into a poetic monologue that is absolutely essential to hear.
He begins by recalling his perspective of the day of 9/11: “Then the towers fell in front of my eyes / And I remember the principal said they wouldn’t / And for a month they used my high school as a triage / And so we went to school in Brooklyn.”
Heems continues a few lines later, “And from then on they called us all Osama / This old Sikh man on the bus was Osama / I was Osama, we were Osama,” then ends the verse with the question: “Are you Osama?”
For the rest of the dialogue, Heems recalls more examples of racism that his family, neighbors and fellow N.Y.C. citizens have endured since 9/11. Much like the theme in “Flag Shopping,” Heems addresses how his family and others bought American flags to prove their loyalty to the country, “Bright American flags that said ‘I am not Osama.’”
Eat Pray Thug shakes the very foundations of political rap as well as this country as a whole. Whether or not someone is a Heems fan or even a rap fan, this release is so far one of the most influential musical works of 2015.
