You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode contains explicit language.
Sudan Archives is a singer, songwriter, producer, and violinist.
She grew up in Cincinnati before moving to LA.
Her music has been called Viscerally Gorgeous by The Guardian and Stunning by Pitchfork,
who gave her best new music.
This September, she's releasing her second album, and one of the tracks on it is Selfish Soul.
She told me the idea for this song started when she asked her boyfriend James,
who's the rapper No Can Do, to shave her head.
Cutting off her hair made her reflect on her whole hair story,
from experiences she had as a kid to the cultural and racial issues that have historically surrounded black women's hair.
My name is Sudan Archives.
So I cut my hair on New Year's Eve because I kind of feel like the hair holds energy.
And maybe if I cut my hair off, I can become like this brand new woman on New Year's.
I have these braids in my head.
And normally when you have braids,
you cut them and then you unbraid them and then you take your hair out of it.
You take the extensions out of it.