It’s easy to feel hopeless in this world, but a 45-minute conversation with Mariah Parker makes you feel like you can do just about anything. A rapper, politician, activist and mother, the Athens, Georgia-based artist who performs as Linqua Franqa channels both sober pragmatism and hope for a better world. From being sworn in as City Commissioner with a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X to the release of this year’s urgent Bellringer LP, it’s hard to know how they find the hours in the day. But conversations like these make you glad there are people like Parker out there who still do.
