Blame It On The Weather (Vinyl LP)

Maarire Brunning-Kouka, the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa-based rapper, singer songwriter, and sound artist better known as MĀ, describes Blame It On The Weather as “about Te Taiao, climate emergency awareness, my job as a kaitiaki, and the many connections that lie between.” Across her second album, she explores these overarching themes through twelve bilingual songs that function as provocations, potential solutions, spaces for personal exploration, and more, rendered through a naturalistic confluence of hip-hop, neo-soul, future beats, jazz, and turntablism.
 
A friends-and-whānau affair, MĀ created Blame It On The Weather with a lively cast of collaborators from the regional, national, and international musical communities she has cultivated and contributed to over the last five years. Featured artists on the album include Mato Wayuhi (Oglala Lakota), Jordyn With A Why, MAJIC, Iris Little, LILA, Leonardo Coghini, and DJ WYNONA. 
 
After programming and producing a set of home demos based on her recent life experiences and realisations, MĀ called on her live band, The Fly Hunnies, and a bevy of session musicians she has performed with around the capital. Over several studio sessions, they brought a live vibrancy to her wide-ranging visions. From there, she worked with the producers Leonardo Coghini, Marika Hodgson and Karnan Saba, and the respective mix and mastering engineers Tony Douglas and Ben Lawson to complete a cycle of songs that rumble, flow, burn and blow like the four elements in an unstable era where humanity is well out of alignment with the ecosystems around us.