Ahead of the 2024 Mercury Prize winner being revealed on Thursday (5 September), Corinne Bailey Rae has today shared a previously unheard outtake from her shortlisted album, Black Rainbows.

A funk-referencing, warped electro track, "SilverCane" finds Bailey Rae imagining how life might have been among the residents of the wealthy black community of Tulsa, OK's Greenwood District - often called Black Wall Street - before white supremacists attacked in 1921, looting and burning hundreds of black-owned homes and businesses. At the end of the two-day massacre, up to 300 people – most of them black – were dead, and Greenwood lay in ruins.

Explaining the inspiration behind "SilverCane", Bailey Rae says:

"Known as ‘Black Wall Street’, Greenwood was a wealthy district of an oil town at the turn of the 20th century, with 600 black businesses, including hotels, a bus company, restaurants, 21 churches, a hospital and post office. Several prominent families owned private planes. The destruction of Greenwood came in 1921 with a well-documented enactment of white supremacist violence, the first incidence of domestic firebombing in US history. But this song celebrates Greenwood before that; the families, the freedom, the confidence, the feeling of having created a place away from hatred and fear. There is an ominous feeling in the background as we, the listener, know what is coming."

Listen to it below:

Bailey Rae continues her Black Rainbows world tour with a couple of festival dates:

10/13 Seoul, South Korea @ Slow Life Slow Live Festival
11/01 Zurich, Switzerland @ JazzNoJazz Festival

The winner of the 2024 Mercury Prize will be announced at London's Abbey Road Studios on Thursday evening. According to bookmakers, Charli XCX is currently the favorite to win for her culture-shifting album Brat. Other artists nominated include Barry Can't Swim, BERWYN, Beth Gibbons, Cat Burns, CMAT, corto.alto, English Teacher, Ghetts, Nia Archives, and The Last Dinner Party.

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