The Seattle musician formerly known as D. Black returns with a new album after his latest conversion, to Orthodox Judaism
By Emily K. Alhadeff for Tablet
On
a dreary Pacific Northwest winter day, through an unmarked door and up a
flight of stairs in a depressing stretch of strip malls just north of
Seattle, I found Nissim Black crammed into a tiny recording room with
his brother-in-law and musical partner, Yosef Brown. Here at London
Bridge Studio, where Soundgarden recorded Louder Than Love in 1989 and
in 1991 Pearl Jam recorded Ten, a repetitive electronic beat rolled out
of the speakers. Both Black and Brown seemed to be in a state of
meditation.“For me, this record is completely spiritual,” Black, whose round face is typically stretched out in a smile these days, said while fiddling with sound controls on a computer. “I was in a trance almost the entire time.”
World Elevation, out this week, is Black’s third album and emblematic of the third version of his musical identity. Growing up in Seattle’s modest hip-hop scene, Damian Black started out as gangsta rapper D. Black and evolved into D. Black the messianic Jewish-Christian. At 27, Black is again reinventing himself—and his music—according to an intense spiritual journey he undertook when he converted to Orthodox Judaism from Christianity between 2010 and 2012. The conversion, which took him out of the music game for two years, also makes him one of a small but influential group of black Orthodox Jewish hip-hop artists that includes Y-Love and Shyne. But Black diverges from his fellow religious rappers in one critical way: While trying to stay in the game as a serious musician, Black has recorded a new album dedicated to setting the Jewish world ablaze with a spiritual message.
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