Singer-songwriter Grace Victoria D’Haiti, BC ’21, has released her brand new album entitled "Love & Justice." Grace Victoria's career has flourished on TikTok and beyond, so have her songs, both in terms of their arrangements and astute political messaging. Take: "Down in Virginia." Clocking up almost half a million streams on Spotify, it's a jazzy, bossa-nova-tinged lilt that focuses on D'Haiti's experience of being a Black woman in the South, as well as the pervasive discrimination that exists far beyond the stretches of her home state. Written around the time George Floyd was brutally murdered at the hands of white police officer Derek Chauvin, it's a complete examination of the racism and aggression faced by Black people daily and the sinister extent to which the white liberal left is complicit in such behaviours. Another track on the album titled “Black Looks Better on Me,” is about blackfishing, and in the song, she sings, “Embrace your skin, let it be/ Complaining ‘bout your whiteness is aggressive/ because our country’s fabric is oppressive.” The song is simultaneously an anthem for Black people to celebrate their culture and dig at those who appropriate it. Victoria grew up in a musical home where her mother owns a small music business, she and her siblings play many instruments, and she has been writing songs since she was about four.
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