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Tend to Your Garden
SELINE HAZE RAPS ON PERSONAL GROWTH AND SELF-LOVE
By Amber Perry music@flagpole.com
the East Athens Community
Center back in February, before
the pandemic curtailed live performances,
several artists performed on leap day for
a Black History Month celebration. One
was 26-year-old Karica Smith—also known
by her stage name, Seline Haze—who was
voted Best Female Hip-Hop Artist at the
2018 Athens Hip-Hop Awards. Gymnasium
bleachers were packed with people attentive
to a fitting prologue to her first-ever release
“Waves,” a wash of empowerment discuss
ing mental health and the Black identity.
In her introduction, Smith filled the wide,
open floor with thoughts on the mental
health stigma that’s present in the Black
community. “People are dealing with men
tal illnesses, and Black people don’t like to
talk about it. Let’s be real. We like to brush
it off,” Smith said. In many of her songs,
the self-proclaimed survivor talks about
her struggles and her life burdens—going
through them to get over them—and pro
vokes the listener to do the same. Smith is
a hip-hop artist with a passion to talk about
mental health.
As I crouched and listened to Smith
over the sounds of children playing, Montu
Miller, Smith’s manager and an employee
at the community center, chimed in on the
conversation. “She takes care of folks—in
music, in her life. That’s just what she does,”
Miller said with ease. Miller has known
Smith for a few years, but it wasn’t until
this past year that he became her manager.
He was always intrigued by her movement
and by what she had to say.
“She’s one of those artists—when she’s
telling her story, you can feel it. When she’s
on the mic, and she’s talking, there’s this
vibe, this energy. You can feel her being
triumphant. You can feel that she’s been
through the fire and got through it,” Miller
said. “She’s a healer.”
One of the best feelings Smith has
experienced is fans telling her that she’s
helped them through a difficult time. “I
was searching for my purpose in life, and I
think I finally found it,” she said. Whether
through her music, motherhood, caring for
her father or her occupation as a certified
nursing assistant at a retirement/rehabilita-
tion facility, her purpose is helping people,
according to Smith. She was conditioned
to be a nurturer at an early age, having
always had to care for her cousins at holiday
gatherings and other family events, she
explained.
Smith grew up in Athens with inspira
tional figures who pushed her to do what
she loved, despite the tradi
tions typically enforced on her, g
like preening for a doctor’s or o
lawyer’s career. In her song
“Focused,” Smith raps about her g
grandfather through feelings
of grief, “Grandpa can’t get
no hug/ or the love/ he used
to speak through our conver
sations/ help us breathe, too/
elevating on a different station/
dodging our different situa
tions/ that cause complications.”
Smith’s grandfather empowered
her as an individual. “He always
told me to do what I love. He
always tried to push that,” she
said. “He was always somebody
that spoke up and was just like,
‘You can be your own self.’”
Grief is a recurring emotion
that Smith addresses in her
music. Not only did she face the
loss of her grandfather, but her
first-born died a month and two
days after giving birth. Other
emergent topics in Smith’s
music come from the obstacles
in everyday life experiences, like
single parenthood, being a Black
woman, and more broadly, men
tal illness. Smith often charac
terizes her depressive states as “demons” in
her songs, an effect of those daily trials and
traumatic events.
Common devices in her songs are
earth-centric metaphors, such as the
opening verses of “Evolve,” her personal
favorite and a tribute to Saba’s song, “Life.”
She starts by advising the listener, “tend
to your garden” and describes why she’s
had to tend to her own, “reaching for that
gleaming silver lining/ life is full of these
surprises/ mindless mind/ I look, so where
I find it?/ I can’t stop the ticking clock/ it’s
timing/ depressing hit the peak from all the
climbing.”
By “tend to your garden,” Smith means
to focus on yourself, love yourself and
cultivate who you want to become. “[The
garden] represents your life, your friends,
the important things, the things that mat
ter and the seeds that you plant in order
for things to grow, things to get better. It’s
whatever you manifest in this life,” she said.
On her bandcamp page, Smith intro
duces “Evolve” by writing, “Life isn’t easy
for everyone. Some are fighting a war no
one knows about, despite our worldly news.
I found myself in a hard battle with depres
sion, struggling for my life.” She asks, “How
much can you lose before you self-destruct?
Or will you use it to EVOLVE?” The depres
sion that Haze describes is coupled with
anxiety. She says she has struggled with
anxiety most of her life. She’s always been
shy—Karica has anyway. Many artists use
an alias— for different reasons—but Smith
said Seline Haze allows her to be the person
she always wanted to be. “Seline Haze just
has this fierceness to her, demands respect,”
she said. Smith jumps into this mindset
before every performance.
Writing music and mixing her own
tracks is a therapeutic process for Smith,
but she hopes that her music can help lis
teners get through whatever they are expe
riencing, whether it’s getting over trauma
or even the small stuff. “I’m hoping that I
can help someone, some kind of way, the
same way music helped me,” she said. “I
make music overall to cope through stuff
I’m experiencing, like depression. I just
hope somebody feels me.”
Smith’s stories of struggle are especially
important to share with other women
in the community. Women are more fre
quently diagnosed with depression, as
compared to their counterparts, according
to Lisa Anger, an Athens-based therapist
in practice for almost 30 years. Women
tend to internalize their emotions, Anger
explains. By sharing these stories, Haze and
other women artists allow for the listener
to relate to those emotions.
Female hip-hop artistry is an important
presence in the Athens hip-hop community,
where there are few participants. Athens-
Clarke County Commissioner, fellow
hip-hop artist and godmother to Smith’s
children is Mariah Parker, also known as
Linqua Franqa. Like Smith’s, Parker’s music
hones on mental health, race and gender
issues. Being a woman in the hip-hop
community is a “mixed bag,” according to
Parker. It poses issues like sexism, toke-
nization and skepticism, but those issues
bring a dimension of relatability, according
to Parker. “I think people see us as unique.
We benefit from standing out amongst
the crowd for representing an underrepre
sented perspective as women, and I think
people value that, too.” After observing
Parker’s involvement in hip hip around
Athens, Smith reached out to her, and their
relationship grew from there. “I think that
her candidness in her stories of struggle,
and finding resilience and strength, and
overcoming those struggles is really power
ful,” Parker says.
With Miller’s help, Smith continues to
make new music, having just released a
six-track EP titled Haze on June 5, and she
continues to perform for her “rose squad”
of family, friends, supporters and anyone
undergoing life trials by fire. As it was near
ing dinner time, Smith’s daughter returned
from play and murmured, “I’m hungry.” The
conversation understandably had to end.
In parting, the mama and musician said,
“Tend to your garden. Love yourself”—
characteristically so. ©
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