“Living in the 2020s has been such a strange experience,” Genesis Owusu tells Apple Music. “I feel like hatred and greed, prejudice, have become cool again. It’s a plague, or a scourge—a worldwide scourge.” That explains half the title of the Ghanaian Australian rapper’s third album, then. As for REDSTAR WU? “As much as it sounds like a character, it’s more an alias. This is the least fantastical album I’ve done. It’s very much right here, right now. But I felt like it was a cool alias, a shining beam through the darkness. And red is my color.” Bristling with punk urgency in songs like “PIRATE RADIO” and “MOST NORMAL AMERICAN VOTER:” (“because there’s a lot of anger and frustration”), yet tempered with woozy synths in “4LIFE” (“because things feel confused and paranoid”), the album tackles the world’s political and societal ills while urging the need for community. Here, Owusu talks Apple Music through the record, track by track. “PIRATE RADIO” “I wrote most of this album throughout 2024. I feel like people were trying to come to terms with what was going on and didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I felt like the best antidote for that was just to say it how it was in the bluntest way possible.” “STAMPEDE” “People can’t afford their groceries [or] housing and rent. People see that and are like, ‘Oh, it’s trans people’s fault. It’s immigrants’ fault.’ We’re being pitted against each other when we’re all in the same boat. ‘STAMPEDE’ is a call to action to say that we are not each other’s enemy. The only way for meaningful change is to stampede together as one.” “HELLSTAR” (with DUCKWRTH) “A lot of this album is about not having much time. The clock is ticking to say what we need to say and do what we need to do. But the clock is also ticking to live life, to love, to experience. This song kind of leans into that sentiment. It’s a post-apocalyptic sludge funk love jam.” “FALLING BOTH WAYS” (with Ladyhawke) “It plays into this sense of apathy. You know, Earth, Heaven, Hell, what’s the difference? I may as well just focus on the people around me and what I can get out of life and my own family and my own loved ones.” “THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE” “‘FALLING BOTH WAYS’ is a bit floaty, it’s ethereal; it’s kind of living in your own world because you’re indifferent and apathetic to what’s going on in the outside world. And ‘THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE’ is the reality. This is what’s actually happening. This song is my exact worldview and feelings politically.” “BLESSED ARE THE MEEK” “I’m seeing a lot of the manosphere stuff—talking about being a man and protecting and providing. [They’re] espousing these ideals, but then [they’re] like, the problem is women. If you really want to provide and protect, be a man and protect your community and espouse your love in a way that is productive.” “LIFE KEEPS GOING” “Trials and tribulations have existed for centuries and our ancestors made it through, and we will also make it through and life will keep going. Life will always keep going, and we have the opportunity to steer it in the direction we want.” “MOST NORMAL AMERICAN VOTER:” “I was watching the American presidential election. It was interesting to see how a time like that amps up the paranoia, the confusion, and the misinformation. One interesting sect of that was the whole QAnon thing. This song was written from the perspective of someone in that realm. It’s full paranoid, hallucinatory.” “DEATH CULT ZOMBIE” “There comes a point where you can bury your head in the sand so much and be so chained to your convictions, even if they have no standing in the real world, that you become cultlike and zombielike and you are easy to manipulate. It’s not a good situation for anyone. Don’t be a zombie.” “SITUATIONS” “I can be angry at you and have my frustrations, and you can do the same to me. But at the end of the day, we’re in the same boat. We need to do something to alleviate our communal issues. Build a coalition. A coalition doesn’t mean that we agree on everything. But a coalition is built upon shared interests that we can all come together for.” “4LIFE” “‘4LIFE’ indicates that coming together and finding commonality doesn’t always work. You can’t do that with everyone. The first line is, ‘But you can’t save them all.’ So that’s how it fits into the context of the album. But solely as a song, it’s detailing a friendship breakup: ‘I miss the life we used to lead.’” “RUNNIN OUTTA TIME” “It goes back to what I was talking about in ‘HELLSTAR,’ where we only have so much time, so we better use it correctly. ‘RUNNIN OUTTA TIME’ feels like a more joyous and triumphant song. Let’s use our time well.” “BIG DOG” “‘Joy as an act of resistance’ is the last line of ‘RUNNIN OUTTA TIME,’ which then falls into ‘BIG DOG.’ It’s just a continuation of that feeling of we are fighting for our right to party, fighting for our right to live, and to love and to have joy and to have jubilation.” “ONE4ALL” “It’s essentially an encapsulation of the themes that we’ve heard up until this point. The lyrics speak about how, yes, things look fucked-up right now, but they are things that we have gotten through in the past and we will get through again, together.”