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Lana Del Rey has announced an album of "gritty" spoken word poetry, set to be released on January 4th, 2020. Announcing the record on a heavily filtered Instagram video — as she is wont to do — Lana told fans that half the proceeds from the album will go towards Native American organizations as a “reparative act” towards this country that she “loves so much.” The organizations that the album will benefit will change year-to-year. The spoken word record comes mere months after she released Norman Fucking Rockwell, her fifth album. Read a transcript of Lana’s full announcement below.
“My book, Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass, is taking a lot longer to hand bind than I thought, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to put up a spoken word album, if you can call it that, on the 4th of Jan. And in thinking about doing that, I had had a thought for a while about how I knew I wanted the album to be around a dollar, because I just love the idea that thoughts are meant to be shared, and that they were priceless in some way.
There was a second part that I had been thinking of before releasing it which is that I wanted half of what the spoken word album is going for to benefit Native American organizations around the country, whether it was for preserving their rights or trying to help keep their land intact. I had wanted to do it because in doing my own work on connecting to my own family lineage, I was encouraged to also try and connect to the country’s lineage.
This was a while ago, and it kind of informed the next album that I’ve been working on, and I just really wanted to pay homage to the country that I love so much by doing my own reparation, my own reparative act. I know it’s a bit of an unusual choice, and I have no reasoning for it other than it just feels right to me, and so for as long as my spoken word album is distributed, half of it will be going to Native American organizations around America. I’m very excited about that, and I’m in the middle of speaking to people from the organizations that will change every year. I love the spoken word record, it’s not particularly polished, it’s a bit more gritty, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
