WHY?

WCPO Lounge Acts

Yoni Wolf of the alternative hip-hop group WHY? performs for WCPO Lounge Acts.
If Yoni Wolf had been born 20 years earlier he might have fallen into the same slipstream as poet/singers like Leonard Cohen, or been greeted as a kind of politically agnostic Bob Dylan. The longtime leader of Cincinnati-bred hip-hop/folk group WHY? definitely deals with politics on the band’s recently released sixth album, Moh Lhean. But they’re not the politics of street protests or the anti-anti-immigration polemics of songs like A Tribe Called Quest’s pointed Trump takedown, “We the People.”
Wolf is concerned with the politics of the heart, the legislation of figuring out where he stands in the world and where to find some light in all that darkness. It’s a topic he’s explored in depth over the group’s nearly 20 year career, but on Moh Lhean some of the cynicism and skepticism of the past is put on a shelf in favor of a more optimistic outlook.
“I would say this album is less… maybe it’s melancholic, but it’s less dark than previous WHY? albums,” says Wolf of the hope embodied in the image on the cover, a hand reaching skyward from under the water. Some people have seen it as a snapshot of man drowning, but for Wolf it’s the opposite: a stretch up, a sign of resilience. “I think there’s [also] a joyfulness and a rejuvenated… a new lease on life.”

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