TLDR: The new Cleo Reed double album, CUNTRY, blends folk, rap, and protest into a radical sonic statement on labor, identity, and the Black femme body.
Cleo Reed isn’t here to play nice. With their new double LP CUNTRY, the New York-based multidisciplinary artist delivers one of the most urgent, genre-defiant protest albums of 2025. Out today, CUNTRY is a dense, folk-electronic hybrid that confronts the brutal realities of labor, gender, and Black embodiment in modern America.
Featuring contributions from billy woods, Elliott Skinner, Momo Boyd of Infinity Song, Malaya, Isa Reyes, Kyle Kidd, and more, CUNTRY is split into two halves. Side A draws from southern roots—blues, soul, country—and the rich lineage of American work songs. Side B flips that tradition on its head with dystopian electronic textures and razor-sharp rap. Together, they hold a mirror to Reed’s own duality: a southern heritage channeled through a New York lens.
“This album is a ‘state of the cuntry,’ if you will,” Reed explains.
“An address where I respond to the chaos and hell-making that happens here. This album is very current, and I don’t think there’s any other time that I could’ve written it. It is a folk rap album, that tells stories of American labor, empirical agenda, and intends to hold space for the working class to understand the ways in which we have been exploited or have participated in the exploitation of others. It also deals with the body, particularly the Black Femme Body.”
Highlights include “Women At War,” a protest anthem reflecting recent attacks on bodily autonomy, and “Americana,” released on Juneteenth, which fuses banjo and gospel with searing political commentary. “Always The Horse, Never The Jockey” is Reed at their most poetic—using metaphor and folk minimalism to reclaim the narrative of the mule.
CUNTRY is more than a collection of songs, it’s a multidisciplinary statement. From software design with Jon Batiste to circus-themed installations at AFROPUNK Festival, Reed continues to expand what it means to be a working artist in America. Tonight’s release show at Stone Circle Theater in Queens is sure to feel less like a concert and more like an exorcism. Expect nothing less from Reed, whose voice now echoes where tradition and defiance collide.
You can find CUNTRY on Apple Music, Spotify, and various other digital streaming platforms.
