It wasn’t until D Smoke was a fully grown adult that the Inglewood-hailing MC first learned about Juneteenth. “I went to a meeting at the Afrikan Student Union at UCLA and it basically turned everything upside down for me,” he says. “It made me feel like the ‘liberty and justice for all’ that was promised in the Pledge of Allegiance never lived up to that promise.” For Apple Music’s 2021 Juneteenth-inspired Freedom Songs, an exclusive collection of covers and originals, the MC created “Kinfolk,” an original song inspired by his hair journey as a Black man. “This song is about self-acceptance for Black people,” he says. “A big part of us appreciating ourselves is understanding and recognizing our own beauty. To talk about my journey with my hair and how I viewed myself as a kid was very personal to me—and very Black.”