iLUMiNATiVE is an independent rap artist hailing from Mullumbimby, born in Byron Bay, Australia. He spent his youth pursuing a professional sport career, taking the opportunity to rap at live events along the way. Describing himself artistically as a Woke spectrum rapper, he states he is “an advocate for freedom, freedom of speech, human rights, neurodiversity, natural medicines, Autism / Aspergers (ASD), universal law, spirituality and sexuality.” He has been recording music since 2005 and has released two projects: The Awakening and Kundalini Rising, which have both featured on radio stations around the world. In particular, the song Know Yourself from Kundalini Rising was the first song to make it onto a national mainstream radio super network in Australia. In 2021, he released his album The Spectrum, which featured the successful tracks Rejoice, Love Forever and especially Born Again, which has racked up 100k streams on Spotify alone.
This latest release, No Means No, is a hip hop/nu metal track that deals head on with the subject of bodily autonomy in the context of the Covid vaccines. From the outset the music grabs you by the throat, a cocktail of razor sharp guitars over a blistering hip hop beat. This lays the sonic platform for an incendiary rap delivery, the first verse a powerful assertion of individuality and free choice: “I am my own doctor and my own government”. As it goes into the chorus the perspective switches to the love of his children: “I would kill for them”.
The chorus itself is a mixture of fearless defiance and righteous anger at the way Covid vaccines have been used as a means of manipulation and coercion, with a terse expression of bodily autonomy: “No means no”.
The second verse expresses the encroaching totalitarianism of Big Tech which restricts our collective right to free speech: “Censorship and shadow banning….” as well as directly addressing the social pressure to be vaccinated with a barely tested new technology: “Get vaxxed? I ain’t having that….”. The third verse rams the message home in style (“Resist the mob”) and the track closes out with the infectious title hook.
Overall, No Means No is a superb hip hop/nu metal fusion track that has particular power for addressing perhaps the most contentious subject of our era, Covid and the mRNA vaccines. The result is a killer track that confronts the elephant in the room that most other artists are too scared to address. With an impact that brought to mind Eminem at his peak, this could be the track that sends iLUMiNATiVE into the stratosphere. Unless it’s censored, of course….
The Faulkner Review 