GAYLETTER

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch

Released to celebrate a Black History Month spent envisioning Black futures alongside remembering Black leaders of the past, Lazarus Lynch’s new song “Busy Being Black” is an affirmation of the power, spirit, and love that Lynch sees in the Black community today. The song was born while Lynch was recharging after the breakout success of his 2019 cookbook, Son of a Southern Chef, which celebrates the Southern soul cuisine his father brought to Queens from Alabama, and the launch of his 2020 musical projects, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of streams. Although written to be the theme song for Josh River’s podcast of the same name, “Busy Being Black” has grown into its own musical film. The piece was directed by Lynch and LaQuann Dawson, creative directed and choreographed by Fritzlyn Hector, and premieres here on GAYLETTER.

The film opens with a child running alone down a long road, palm groves rustling on either side of the way. We see women with babies wrapped closely to them, and in a city, women with shopping bags. A man looks bemused on a branch. The child returns. Lynch appears, dazzling, in glimpses of an elsewhere, alongside dancers and flowing purple fabric. After a question, he speaks a benediction for the child: “Wake up, little Black boy. People are rooting for you. Go forth, little Black boy. You are everything.” The drumming begins, and so does the gathering.

A trio of dancers divide the camera’s vanishing point. In closeup, a smile raises a man’s face like a sunrise, followed by a stunning portrait of Lazarus and his brother, Joshua Amos Lynch. The beat takes off, and the multiplicity of Blackness, expressed by dozens of individual fashions, performances, and portraits, takes the stage. At every moment, the camera cherishes the individual, lingering in the richness of a gaze, catching the candid tossed-off laugh, letting the person’s beauty be howsoever it comes. The film captures community love like a joyful mural. Binaries that typically divide are envisioned into spectrums. Lynch appears in several looks throughout, calm in his elation, less the center than one of many.

Asked about the emotion of “Busy Being Black,” Lynch said,“Stepping back, I think about Black culture, and I think about my family, and I see that we are all up to one thing, and that is: Minding our business and being Black. It’s the soundtracks that color our childhoods. It’s all of those textures. It’s our fashion, our hair, our nails.”

Community love in the face of oppression is “a statement to the world, an affirmation of our integrity, our self-preservation, and our beauty. It’s an act of resistance to tyranny and the struggle. It’s a way of saying you can’t keep us down, and we’re gonna put on our Sunday best, and we’re gonna eat the best food, and everything’s going to be dynamite because we are dynamite.”

The song was produced, both vocal and instrumentation, by Lynch in two hours. “It’s like that divine moment. There’s songs I’ve worked on for three years that are sitting in my phone that are halfway done. Every once in a while, I’ll have a moment where the entire song comes and just flows all in one. And that was one of those moments.”

A moment it is. And Lazarus Lynch can feel there is more to come. “There’s a scripture that says eyes haven’t seen, ears haven’t heard, what God has in store. I’m just going to stay grateful.” Get uplifted with “Busy Being Black” by watching the music video below.

Hair by Sabina Clarke and Makeup by Miracle Lynch

Co-Directors: Lazarus Lynch and LaQuann Dawson
Creative Director & Choreographer: Fritzlyn Hector
Collaborator: Josh Rivers
Stylist: Keeon Mullins
Hairstylist: Sabina Clarke
Make-up Artist: Miracle Lynch