Local musician Skarlet Blak is taking the Denver rap scene by storm

Rap is a brilliant and vibrant genre of music, but one that is often
misunderstood, and saddled with negative stereotypes. One is that of women
filling the role of “bitches” and “hoes,” only there to satiate men’s desires,
and another is a negative association with cannabis, painting the plant as
dangerous contraband to be handled by careless thugs. Skarlet Blak manages to
dispel both of these annoying stereotypes with one careless flip of her
always-awesome hair, as she shines as a woman in the rap scene and pens
positive tunes about everyone’s favorite healing plant.

“My sound is like a gumbo pot; you throw some Tupac in there, some Mary
J. Blige, some Wiz Khalifa, some Lauryn Hill, then you might have Skarlet Blak,”
she told us. “I am laid back, feminine like Lauryn Hill, also very poetic as
far as what I write, and I’m also a hustler.”

Blak always strove to be a musician, but didn’t take the necessary
steps to make her dream a reality until prompted by a colleague. “When I was
little, I thought I was going to be a pop star,” she told us. “I played violin,
guitar, piano. In high school, I kind of said f*ck music, and then I moved out
to Colorado right when I got out of high school and got a job at a call center.
One of my cubicle mates was a producer and wanted me to write something for him
and record. I went over with him and recorded a song called ‘Paper Chase.’ I
didn’t think nothing of it but then he released it and it got some really great
feedback.”

Since then, Blak has been steadily recording and promoting her music,
despite the added challenges of being a mother and a wife. She is in the
process of recording her EP, The New Blak,
and just released the single “All I Need,” about all the ways that cannabis
has healed her life.

Blak did not always smoke cannabis—in fact, she used to decry it as a
drug and a crutch, until she discovered its medicinal properties. “I was always
anti-weed, for a long time,” she stated. “I was on prescription drugs all the
time. When I was in fourth grade I fell down a flight of stairs and had my
first concussion. That led to my first prescription for headaches. When I got older
I had a second concussion, and I was prescribed Percocet and had to get a shot.”

“My friend at the time worked at a dispensary, and he wanted to bake me
some special brownies. I basically told him ‘I don’t want your drugs.’ He said ‘you’re
telling me you won’t eat my medical brownies but you’ll pop pills?’ I gave in,
and I didn’t have a migraine for about two weeks after eating one little piece
of a weed brownie. I’d been popping pills for years, and all I had to do was
eat a bite of a brownie to get rid of the pain. It went from ‘I’ll eat a
brownie now and then,’ to starting to smoke it. I was modest about it at first,
and I’m just starting to come out about it. People like to look at stoners a
certain way, and it still needs to be accepted in the medical community. That’s
where the ‘All I Need’ track came from; it’s the first track where I was actually
really open about it.”

Blak is dedicated to her craft, and to spreading the good work about
cannabis to the masses. Her story of healing is real, and her strength as an
empowered woman shines through her music. With women like Blak running the game,
the future of Denver rap should be a breath of fresh air for this genre.

www.skarletblakmusic.com

IN CONCERT

August 27 @ Bluebird Theater in Denver