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His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering Image
Metascore
82

Universal acclaim - based on 4 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The third release for the auto-biographical trilogy of albums from Zambian-Canadian rapper Backxwash features guest appearances from Censored Dialogue, Ghais Guevara, Michael Go, Morgan-Paige, Pupil Slicer, Sadistik, and Vaelastrasz.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Mar 21, 2023
    84
    With His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering, Mutinta completes her heroic triptych. Processing her own fury and the fury stashed in the world’s memory. ... Leaving us stunned, devastated, ecstatic.
  2. The Wire
    Mar 21, 2023
    80
    The large number of guest rappers (seven in all) makes the album sound like the voice of a rage-filled community rather than just one person’s desperate cries, magnifying its impact. [Feb 2023, p.44]
  3. Mar 21, 2023
    80
    This is extreme music heavy in both sound and content. But this is also part of the strength of the album. It is unflinching in its subject matter and depth of its darkness, just as it is unafraid to be exactly what it is. And that's something quite unlike anything else you'll hear in 2022.
  4. Mar 21, 2023
    76
    The final track, “Mukazi,” arrives. It promises the grail, the holy truth behind the fanatical farce, and the reward for this brutal journey into the hellish depths of Mutinta’s psyche. ... It’s left ambiguous whether she can truly bring herself to say these affirmations, whether this is the triumph she has earned. It could be.