In today’s age, technology has flooded our lives with content. Caught in the mire are today’s musicians who champion an art form that’s more widely distributed than any other throughout human history. And we, more often than not, overlook the music created by unfamiliar faces because it’s challenging. We’d rather have an easy listen, a known quantity to skim through while we think about something else.
Hearing is easy, but listening is difficult. Welcome to “Why We Like It”, where we rebuke the trends in favor of thoughtful analysis and underknown sounds.
“Gemini” Ft. Benita — Lex Leosis
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How We Found It
From Toronto, Ontario to our SubmitHub inbox, Lex Leosis brings us “Gemini.” The single got my attention with the catchy combination of Benita’s soulful hook and the smooth rhythm of Leosis’ deeply personal verses. Wrapped in the emotion of the song, the track vents her frustrations dealing with the world’s misunderstandings of bisexuality.
Why We Like It
“Gemini,” the single’s title, is an allusion to having two faces, a split identity. It’s a metaphor for the pressure that Lex Leosis has felt as bisexual person to “pick a side” of her identitiy. The pain of being misunderstood even by those she’s closest to comes out in her extremely cohesive verses. She tells the story of getting close to a relationship with a girl who constantly questions her loyalty; making her sexuality a question of choosing one or the other and finding insecurity in Leosis’ duality.
The delivery of the verses is somehow gentle and compassionate, but also fierce and confident. It’s the sound of speaking to a deep personal truth. She raps with the aggression of someone fed up and frustrated, but also with the sadness of someone looking back. It’s a sound that understands it can be both.
Her verses are split intermittently by Benita’s sultry hook: “Fell in a love with a… Gemini / Wishy-washy in the end she can’t… pick a side / Fell in love with a… Gemini / Can’t control the way you love me / But you hella fine, hella fine.” The gentle R&B hook adds a foil to the trap textures of the track’s production. It’s unique because of the way the two faces of the track blend into one cohesive identity. Forcing the track to choose a sound one way or the other would ultimately take away from the core of what drew me to the track. Leosis understands through her personal experience that the world isn’t black and white. The best things are built from taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that and making something special and complete.
From Lex Leosis
Gemini came about after years of confusion and frustration. I was always told that being bisexual wasn’t real. That you had to be ONE thing with a “curiosity” on the other side. I fought my feelings on this for a long time. I quite literally conformed. It wasn’t until the relationship that I described in Gemini that I started to see the other side. I was in love and happy and I realized that this person didn’t quite accept my bisexuality either. I felt misunderstood. I still do.I think a lot of bisexual identifying people do.” – Lex Leosis for CentralSauce (2020)
More From The Artist
“Gemini” is a single from Lex Leosis’ 2020 project, Ouzo. The project is a great showcase for more of the same combinations of R&B and aggressive rap performances that make Leosis more than one flavor of artist. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram or check out her website to stay up to date with new music.
More to Discover
Subscribe to the CentralSauce mailing list so you never miss out on the freshest sauce. Check out this continuously updated playlist of songs Brandon has added to our Discovery section! Each track or artist has been featured in our “Why We Like It” section, so be sure to check out the page here on the site.
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