In honor of Black History Month, Atwood Magazine has invited artists to participate in a series of essays reflecting on identity, music, culture, inclusion, and more.

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Today, Austin, TX-based writer, performer, producer, filmmaker, and one-man tour de force Mobley shares a special poem for Atwood Magazine’s Black History Month series!

Mobley’s songs have racked up millions of streams on DSPs and landed sync placements on HBO, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and CW; seen airplay adds on Alt Nation, KROQ, KUTX, ACL Radio, and KEXP; and received praise from Billboard, Noisey, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Consequence of Sound, and American Songwriter. While the studio is his first love, Mobley is most at home on the road. The consummate frontman has played dozens of festivals worldwide, and opened for Cold War Kids, Phantogram, James Blake, Bishop Briggs, and many more.

The present moment finds Mobley focused on the future: “Living with and working through these songs and stories has been the most fulfilling challenge of my artistic life. I can’t wait to share it all and see the life it takes on when it’s no longer just mine.”

Mobley’s latest single, “No Exit,” is out now, and his forthcoming album, ‘We Do Not Fear Ruins,’ releases April 23rd on Last Gang Records/MNRK Music. “No Exit” finds Mobley time-traveling to blend retro, modern, and futuristic sounds. The song starts with a Morricone-inspired whistled motif, but beneath the groove and cinematic swagger, it’s a meditation on solipsism, solitude, and the “undiscovered country” of the afterlife. The tension between the song’s laidback verses and earnest, pleading choruses mirrors the tensions in Jacob, a perpetual loner who nevertheless proclaims his love for humanity, crying out in the refrain, “What am I without people?” The video handles the song’s weighty themes with a healthy dose of cheek and dry humor.

In his poem “#000” (named for the hexadecimal code for the color black), Mobley challenges us to consider the limits of “representation” and the power of seizing the terms of discourse. Read the poem below, and listen to “No Exit” and more wherever you stream music!

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#000

by Mobley

there is nothing quite like the thrill of refusal
Black refusal
to be governable or
marketable or
make oneself understood

to be fixed by the gaze of another

to read the performance of one’s diverse identity
only from familiar, respectable scripts

to intone the sanctioned litanies

to spend any
more life than absolutely
necessary
biting tongue, biding time through the shortest month of the year

there is nothing quite like the thrill of refusal

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:: stream “No Exit” here ::

:: connect with Mobley here ::

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