Following the Ebb and Flow of Iti Bubba’s Newest Track “FLUID”

Music and water have always shared a duality across time and space, existing in a parallel of life's cohabitation. Every sound wave, micro-transmission, and particle of our peculiar presence returns us to this one thing: we live in a dynamic, forever-flowing act of fluidity. From a tincture of queer Māori artists and a super-shy straight guy comes Iti Bubba's newest and smoothest track, "FLUID."

The New Zealand hip-hop group, consisting of musicians MĀ, DJ WYNONA, and TAMA, are natives to the art of collective harmony. As indigenous peoples have long known–individual species can only exist in concert with other individual living species. The same applies to the orchestration, production, and accompaniment of music, which the crew of Iti Bubba knows very well. Their new song is a collaborative exchange of instinctual beats, organic lyrics, and energetic vocals.

After their debut EP, Idiot Check, released this September, "FLUID" took shape in a spur of incidental randomness one night in TAMA's home in Pōneke, Wellington. Prepped with the gear, snacks, and lights–everything you need to make good music, MĀ, WYNONA, and TAMA got the vibe going and started to cook up a new beat. As they drew instrumentals from artists like Lord Finesse's 'Hip 2 Da Game' and MF Grimm's 'Landslide,' the three ran around the house freestyling, singing, and yelling words. The word "fluid" came about as they ebbed, flowed, and surrendered to the fluidity of music-making.

With a love of self-discovery and trying new things, Iti Bubba redirects the hip-hop train and offers a new paradigm regarding how we educate ourselves on sex through music and lyrics. Using mellow cadences, sensual lyrics, and good feelings, "FLUID" brings the taboo, the untouchable, the normally unvocalized to the surface.

As a queer woman writing music for other queer women, MĀ touches the spot most classic hip-hop artists miss, which is: what women want during sex, what they wish to vocalize, and how they want to give and receive love. Disregarding the damaged denotation of rap music that preaches the sexualization of women, "FLUID" exhibits how music can be a lyrical dance of beautiful intimacy between two women.

The song finishes with a splash of jazz as a semicolon for what this song represents: fun, seduction, and sexiness that comes with good rhythm and flow. "FLUID" moves just as it sounds: ebbing, flowing, and communicating with its surrounding elements. Connecting to the tissue of the wai (Māori word for water), "FLUID" transports me back to my homeland, close to a running stream, situated amongst the native arms of Papatūānuku (Māori Earth Mother)... Now, I do not know Tangaroa (Māori god of the sea) too well, but I know he would be vibing to this song hard.

Iti Bubbas, along with other Māori musicians, feature on the Major Māori Mixtape, a weekly thirty-minute mix of predominantly waiata Māori and new music. If you have yet to discover New Zealand beats and bops, may this be your divine calling from the Māori music gods!