Poet aja monet Shares New Single & Short Film "The Devil You Know"

Brooklyn-born poet and activist aja monet has released new single and short film "The Devil You Know" via indie label drinksumwtr.

Surrealist blues poet and cultural worker aja monet has delivered new single and short film, "The Devil You Know." The wordsmith collaborated with jazz trumpetist Christian Scott, drummer Marcus Gilmore, and composer Samora Pinderhughes for the track, which follows her 2022 debut single “Give My Regards To Brooklyn." With monet as an act on independent boutique record label, drinksumwater, "The Devil You Know" sees the 35-year-old homaging legendary jazz poets like Gil Scott Heron and Jayne Cortez.

“It was an honor to work with such world class musicians to support such an important poem,” she stated. “The mood and tone of the song is raw, vulnerable, and courageous—full of possibility, including the many voices of the people as a chorus in conversation with the truth. It’s a poem to make you shout, make you weep, make you want something more. ‘The devil you know’ is still the devil.”

"The song is a sonic ode to our striving for a better society," monet continued about the single. "It leans on the radical tradition of jazz, blues, and poetry clubs around the world to gather and speak truth to power, to exercise our hearts, visions, and dreams together so that we may be made anew.”

Also a storyteller and organizer, monet won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007. Her first poetry book, My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter, releasing via Haymarket Books in 2017.

Watch "The Devil You Know" below.