Salome MC is Iran's first female rapper, and her LP Excerpts from Unhappy Consciousness is the first full-length Persian hip-hop album produced by a woman. This is all the more impressive when you learn that in 2007, the Iranian government denounced rap, with the Ministry of Culture shutting down recording studios where these albums are made, raiding record stores where this music might be sold, blocking websites, and, even arresting the artists themselves.
But Salome put a positive spin on the situation, telling Curiosity Magazine: "Wherever you live, if you are under a government which tries to control and regulate as many aspects of your life as an individual as possible, you are going to become political, unless you live in extreme wealth or extreme poverty, which is a different story. Why? Because it’s your everyday life. You feel it when you walk down the street. You feel it when you go to school, go to work. It’s there when you are partying with friends. It’s there when you are dining with family. So that aspect of my music, and the fact that I am very libertarian in thought, I definitely owe it to the special nature of the Iranian government."
Released in 2017, Excerpts from Unhappy Consciousness is the culmination of two years work, said to be an "autobiographical concept album that explores a woman's journey in the light of Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness, with each track correlating to a stage of dialectical life of spirit." Salome MC currently lives in Seattle where she works as a producer at Jack Straw Cultural Center and leads music production workshops for visually-impaired children and youth.
