Popular music has plenty of upbeat anthems that celebrate the performer’s beauty and success—think Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” or Olivia Rodrigo’s “All-American Bitch.” It also has lots of downbeat paeans to the performer’s pitifulness, a la Beck’s “Loser” or Radiohead’s “Creep.” Much less common are enthusiastic, danceable tracks that boast of the singer’s ugliness and smallness, which is what makes Genesis Owusu’s music such a lumpy, boisterous joy: his brilliant 2021 debut, Smiling With No Teeth (Ourness/House Anxiety), encapsulates this approach, celebrating imperfection as funky, busted-up defiance.
Owusu’s 2023 sophomore record, Struggler (Ourness/AWAL), is a bit less distinctive and confrontational than Smiling With No Teeth. Even so, there’s no shortage of awesomeness, such as the lighthearted disco perversion of “That’s Life (A Swamp),” where he sings “Paint me, artisan, the color of sleaze / Puncture me with holes, the boy becomes breeze.” The Metamorphosis-channeling boogie “The Roach” opens with a squall of feedback and name-checks Franz Kafka, but it isn’t an exercise in existential despair. “I’m tryna break free with a penciled stanza / So are we human or are we dancer?” he raps. Liberation isn’t easy, but if you’ve been turned into an insect, Owusu insists, then you’ve got more legs to dance with.
Genesis Owusu Godly the Ruler opens. Fri 10/13, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $22, $30 balcony, $270 opera box (seats six), 17+