Opening with a plaintive set of piano chords that check both gospel and the blues in their tenor (so appropriate for a track about New Orleans), P-Gruv and McShyzt's "Katrina's Song (My Prayer)" reflects on the hurricane and its aftermath as the drama unfolded on the national news. "Aug. 29, 2005 — America was devastated by a hurricane named Katrina," P-Gruv begins, stamping the song in time before his verse repaints all those sad pictures. The pumps failing and the levees breaking, the water rising, the frantic families on rooftops, lost souls in the Superdome, and the damning "dead bodies covered with sheets/No sign of police (where they at)?" By the time we get to the chorus, and a woman's voice echoing sharply (and maybe pleading a little, willing herself to believe it) that the kingdom of God has been realized on Earth, the track has become an elegy, with flinty notes of sadness and frustration reverberating within it. "Katrina's Song" isn't so much a prayer as it is an apology. ("I can't be the one to say I know what you're going through ...") But that it was made at all proves that no one's forgetting, even after the lights of the news cameras have been turned off.
Hipnotech is donating the proceeds of this single to Katrina's victims. Visit www.hipnotechrecords.com for more information.
Johnny Loftus is the music editor of Metro Times. Send comments to [email protected].
