The beauty and the pain that shares the space of aja monet’s new track, “The Devil You Know,” and its accompanying short film is nothing short of breathtaking. There is a history here, not just of black politics but of performers gone by; aja resurrects them all in this ten-minute piece that cannot be ignored. There is a lot of talk about slam poetry like it’s the new thing, but the images of the genius Gil Scott Heron, playing jagged over the image of aja, remind us that this simply is not so. Jayne Cortez also comes to mind, and the powerhouse performance of Abbey Lincoln, on her husband Max Roach’s 1960 opus, We Insist! Images of chains emerge over the vocal intro of “We are being told of the greatness of Western Civilisation,” and this quickly melds into a montage of stark imagery – sl...