"Supermodel, Superhero, Super Freak": Exploring SALIMATA's 'The Happening'
Brooklynite SALIMATA's breakout 2025 album is a fearless celebration of Black femininity in rap form. Let's dive in.
SALIMATA in 2025. Image property of SALIMATA.
The open expression of Black femininity is perhaps the most incendiary act in hip-hop, if not popular music at large. From Betty Davis to Missy Elliott to Janet Jackson to Megan Thee Stallion, any resistance to or deviation from the narrow confines our zeitgeist offers Black female expression is scrutinised, scoffed at, placed under a microscope for a week to ten days.
Writing and performing about pleasure is often hypocritically dismissed by Black men and absconded by white people on both the right and left as 'hypersexual' or antifeminist. And as traditional thinking goes, doing the inverse—keeping it lyrical miracle dyrical—won't sell.
And trying to do both all at once, independently, without serious mainstream institutional support? Damn near impossible. And yet 10K's SALIMATA has done just that (and for the third time) on her most recent studio album, The Happening.
Produced mostly in Marseilles, the Brooklyn-based SALIMATA (whose mother hails from Côte d’Ivoire) exudes a sultry, cool disposition that hasn't been particularly featured on her grittier past works, such as 2023's Ouch and 2024's Wooden Floors. But here she seems to have realised she’s made it, expanded her horizons and turned 27 years old.
The Happening sees her knee-deep in her comfort zone as she exhibits an effortless transcendence of those aforementioned confines in a robust, indulgent, modern classic of an East Coast album.
The first thing I noticed were the legs. Taut, tatted, heeled and featured prominently on the massive grille of an old-school Mercedes-Benz. The album cover of The Happening is exactly what the rest of the album sounds like. From the very outset, it's obvious that SALIMATA is simultaneously pimp, princess, vixen and poet.
“The album’s first track, “SWEETTHANG”, sounds like the introduction to a Blaxploitation film—our mahogany-skinned protagonist stepping authoritatively down a city street à la the 1971 movie Shaft. Her flow is cool-headed and composed, but there’s still an edge, a snarl.”
The album's first track, "SWEETTHANG", sounds like the introduction to a Blaxploitation film—our mahogany-skinned protagonist stepping authoritatively down a city street à la the 1971 movie Shaft. Her flow is cool-headed and composed, but there's still an edge, a snarl.
That Shaft feeling continues into the next track, "Spur", a driving funk sample that gives SALIMATA more space to flash her jewellery, pound her chest and bask in the glory of her work. The next three tracks—"Let's Talk About It", "Cake Up" and "Fergie"—expand the album's scope, as SALIMATA deftly attacks more house and alternative beats with the ferocity and dexterity of a Bahamadia, Azealia Banks and Nicki Minaj.
The sixth track, "9-5", is another standout, both lyrically and subject-wise, as the rapster uses two different flows over a frantic, dense sample while musing ever so briefly about how hard she’s worked, her family and origins and what she'll do next.
"Sprung" is probably the project's most R&B-leaning track, a smooth record that sounds like something The Internet could've made. "It's Like Dat" and "Why You Gotta Act Like???" are honest slices of life and love that add even more depth to SALIMATA's stream-of-consciousness storytelling.
"Foil" is a return to that grit, that grindstone flow she displayed on her earlier projects. Her On the Radar performance of that song caught fire online—and rightfully so. It's a concise, supremely confident showing that once again toys with those themes of past poverty and present success, making the beat all the more fitting.
The tail end of the album returns to the tasteful Blaxploitation sound it started with, "Jackpot" and "Moonlight", accenting an incredibly cohesive, self-assured and unfettered body of self-expression. There's no box for this Black woman. SALIMATA is pimp, poet, vixen, lover and fighter, all at once. She's in complete artistic control here and not a moment feels forced or out of place.
It's a shame this album came out in the midst of a long, hard winter in the northeast U.S. This is a feet-up album—for lounging, cruising, laying, indulging—for taking it all in. That's what I'll be doing to this album all summer. Hopefully, you will too.
Stream The Happening below: