Mother Nature Channel Their Natal Saturn on New EP

Never afraid to speak on societal ills, Mother Nature masterfully weave political rhetoric into music that you can party to.

The Chicago-based emcees fuse hard-hitting hip-hop, melodic rhythms and boundless lyricism to raise the frequency of our collective conscience. Well on their way, Mother Nature is a dynamic force of Black womanhood. Their mission is to be a fearless force in hip-hop through peace and love.

Fresh off a European tour, MC’s Klevah and T.R.U.T.H. sat down with Jill Hopkins to share their experiences with transition in their latest album Saturn Return.

Welcome back! I’m always happy to have you in the studio and I’m happy to talk mew music with y’all anytime, but first school me on the astrological themes here. Talk to me about the Saturn Return as a concept.

I mean, we’re still learning as we go. We actually had a podcast that we did with some homeys, and they kind of broke down Saturn Return for us probably a year before we did the project, and they were like, “Oh this is why you guys are going through what you’re going through because you’re both in your 27, 28 range. And you know, that’s a period of time where there’s a lot of destruction. Where things in your life kind of fall apart so that you can pick up the pieces and really find what it is that you need, and what it is that will help you to propel further.”

We don’t really pick the title and then go into the music. We already had the music and we were just going over the themes and everything. And I was like, “Saturn Return. That’s what it is.” It is a cosmos thing what we’re going through, but at the same time, it’s very real feeling all the pressure, but at the same time knowing that we’re in the perfect place we’ve gained the wisdoms that we need to move forward and to be confident in our journey.

The way hip hop is set up you can be just as successful around nothing. Around the idea of superficiality. So I appreciate when you come to the table with substance

Oh yeah, we have to! That’s number one. The music that we were able to pick from that time period reflected everything that was symbolic of the Saturn Return, so it was just crazy just to go back and then piece those pieces together like, “wow, this is our Saturn Return right here.”

Talk to me about this European tour that you just came back from. Self-funded, so snaps to that, because that is hard. But that tells me that enough people have appreciated the work that you do. How was knowing that you had people putting faith in you to do something that massive?

The European tour came right at the time that we were working on Saturn Return. It all happened within the same month. And it was really like walking in faith because we don’t know that many people in Europe. We didn’t have any shows booked in Europe. We had an opportunity to go to Europe, and we made the most of that opportunity. And we really have to give much love to our manager for making the connections really connecting all the dots and organizing things and not sleeping for a couple weeks to make sure that the trip was thorough. 

The shows that we ended up getting on and the tours that we ended up getting on were all black women. And it was just right on time. It was after we had already booked our tickets and everything just fell into place. To be in those spaces, to be in a different place, to be in a different country, and people love you. Or you bump into somebody and they had already heard the show here. Being so many miles away, it’s like, “what? how?” It’s just incredible. The work that we were able to put in and be prepared to do that type of trip and the way that we were able to go over there and just bring the energy that we have here and harness it there.

Did you pick up anything from the kind of hip hop that these different places are putting out?

I feel like in London we got to get a bit of a taste of what they are doing. So like, the grime scene, stuff like that. We got to tap into that a little bit. And just the energy of getting to it and getting it done, which we already carry, but that just gave us that extra boost to just keep going, keep pursuing and just make it happen.

It’s dope to see other people out there doing the same things and just creating that community. I feel like it was very community based out there and that’s pretty much what we’re trying to build more so in Chicago.

Talk to me about the live shows around Saturn Return. The imagery that you’ve painted in the songs lends itself to a real nice stage show. What did you have up your sleeves?

Yo, that’s crazy, because we actually haven’t been performing a lot on this, like from this project. I don’t think we’ve actually performed all the songs together. We picked a few here and there. So I think we’ll see. 

What we did do was an exhibition at our think space in Bronzeville, which is kind of like our art house. And we did a full exhibition with our home girl, Kianni Bey. And it was just immersive. You can come in and listen to the project, but also see the photography that lends more to the myth of Mother Nature and our experiences. 

We have some of our journal entries on display, and pictures from our journey from the past four years, because a lot of people might be new to Mother Nature Or they might have been fans for a few years, but it’s really dope to see the evolution and where we are now in like where we know we’re going. 

So I’m excited to still perform a lot of these records and then we got some new stuff that’s on its way.

Follow Mother Nature

More from Vocalo:

• The Reel Critic Travels ‘Across The Spider-Verse’
• Woman Living at Hyde Park Bus Shelter Now On Hospice: Family Searches For Missing Funds
• Closing Weekend Of “not all realisms: photography, Africa and the long 1960s”
• Tarnynon Onumonu Uses Words As Tools To Heal
• León Larregui: un cierre memorable de Prismarama Tour en House of Blues Chicago