Her Word Is Bomb, Psalm One’s new book is a joy
When I was in third grade going to school in Williamstown, MA some students from Williams College would come to meet students and teach them about writing. I was a very ambitious elementary school writer who had already been pushing out long, albeit shitty, stories. I rattled off the plot of the stories I had designs on writing to this undergrad and she seemed impressed. After getting through my science fiction-esque tales I told her I wanted to write a story about going to the grocery store or something equally mundane but I added that nobody would want to read it, that it would be boring. This young woman said “if you tell it well, it will never be boring”. That comment has stuck with me and it has had a great impact on my writing and on the way I relate to other’s writing.
Psalm One, aka Cristalle Bowen, has written a book that is fundamentally interesting. . .it’s called Her Word is Bond. Whether the chapter is documenting her highest highs or her lowest lows there’s a beauty in telling it well. Her story is notably unique but it’s also relatable. It’s a story with the ups and downs that most of us experience, rather than the clear trajectory towards superstardom that we often see documented in musician autobiographies. Psalm is a Chicago artist who made an early career pivot from chemistry to hip-hop and navigated complex personal and business relationships with a commitment to being true to herself. Since her professional start circa 2000 Psalm One spent periods of time on the road and on top of the world and times broke-as-shit stringing together a living with odd jobs and piecemeal gigs. No matter where she’s at in her career progression she tells it unflinchingly. This is what I love. She takes account of the staggering disrespect she sustained at times in the her career but she doesn’t let herself off the hook. There’s opportunities, collaborations that she derailed or sabotaged and she holds herself to task. There’s no way to know every side of ANY story, but I find this honesty in Psalm’s stories about her personal life as well.
I’ve crossed paths with Psalm One for pretty much the entirety of her career. We’ve shared stages together plenty of times and I know that that proximity plays a role in this book being such a page turner for me. I remember some of these shows, some of these releases, some of these issues. I can’t compare my path to Psalm’s, there’s more difference than there is commonality, but what I read rings true. The way your living can hinge on a couple emails and phone calls, a couple reviews, a handful of people thinking the right thing about you and hopefully thousands of people agreeing. It is fucking precarious. It’s also precarious to navigate the world of “underground” hip-hop. You want the right people to like you, but maybe you fear that things will be worse if the wrong people like you first. But primarily, I find making a living as a creative artist precarious because it’s constantly falling apart. Speaking for my time trying to make a go of it strictly as an artist. . .it was beautiful and ugly and depressing and boring and thrilling and it is absolutely exhilarating to read some version of this story in a real ass book. I file this book right next to So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star from Jacob Slichter. That book is a story of Semisonic’s drummer finding out how boring fame is.When you tell a story well, it can never be boring. Her Word is Bond is a beautiful snapshot of a woman who has persevered in a profoundly challenging profession not to come out on top. . .just to fucking come out. To come out healthier, sober, more creative, more aware and quite simply more alive. It’s a beautiful book to read and it gives me so much more perspective on an incredible artist’s life. Thank you for writing it Psalm.
