Poet Aja Monet began exploring musical avenues during the late 2010s, collaborating with Eryn Allen Kane and the Smoke Signals Collective before releasing her debut album, When the Poems Do What They Do, in 2023. At just 19, she was the youngest-ever winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam; her 2017 collection My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter received a nomination for the NAACP Image Award.