Canadian rapper and recent Juno nominee Eternia has just revealed her innermost secrets through her new song and video, “To The Future,” in support of Kids Help Phone (1-800-668-6868). The song is from her latest album, At Last, on Brooklyn, NY indie label Fatbeats.
“It basically tells my personal experiences with sexual assault, gun violence, abortion, domestic abuse. It’s kind of serious. It’s all the skeletons in my closet in one grocery list,” Eternia tells Samaritanmag.
The song, which she recorded with producer MoSS, addresses a man who wants to marry her but she wants him to know about “some issues that I’ve been through.”
She raps that “pops was not a nice dude; he tried to kill my mother, this one time; I was still in the womb…”
“…The same year I was assaulted with a gun; these dudes locked me in a room; molested me for fun.”
The lyric also references how she went to college and graduated with honours.
“You could make me your wife,” she raps, “but why would you wanna? I got problems so go on, go on, go on.”
The video, directed by Erica Shallow, begins with unattributed statistics that “every ninety seconds, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted” and “60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police” and then finds Eternia seated in a dilapidated house.
“I’m hoping that my story will encourage other people to come out to speak about what they’ve gone through, to seek help, to seek counseling, potentially through Kids Help Phone,” Eternia explains.
“A lot of us have things that we push to the backburner and pretend don’t happen and those are things that really come out later in life and hurt us. So when I wrote ‘To The Future,’ I thought to myself, ‘What are all the things that I pretend didn’t exist; pretend didn’t happen?’ and I put them all in one song, pretty traumatic experiences.
“It’s really important to actually address them, to seek help and do something about it. It’s the first time I talked about almost everything in that song.”
Since releasing it, she has received the kind of feedback she was hoping for, that the lyric and its message has made a difference in other people’s lives.
“A lot of women hit me up personally and say, ‘Thank you for speaking out; I went through the exact same thing and by you talking about this, it almost feels like I released [the song]; it’s like you spoke for me,’” Eternia relays.
“So it’s been really encouraging that it’s given other people courage to speak about their experience. I’ve lost track of how many women have personally contacted me and told me that their story is the same as mine or similar.”
Sneakers