Pip: TREMG covers music, memory, and the kind of anniversaries that don’t come with cake — and this episode is no exception.
Mara: Today we’re looking at a protest record released on a significant anniversary, what it means to speak for names the public never learned, and why an artist says a song she wrote four years ago still hasn’t lost its urgency.
Pip: Let’s start with the record and the woman it honors.
Tee Slaves Speaks for the Graves
Mara: The question at the center of this piece is what it means to memorialize someone eleven years later — not just the famous names, but every Black woman whose story never reached a national headline.
Pip: The post opens with Tee Slaves naming that purpose directly in her lyrics: “My name is Tee Slaves and I’m speaking for the graves, for the Sandra Blands, Nia Wilsons, Breonna Tays…Say they name.”
Mara: That lyric is doing more than listing names. The post explains the intention is deliberately broader — the named women are entry points into a much wider conversation about Black women whose deaths never generated the same public attention.
Pip: And the timing here is specific. July 13th marks eleven years since Sandra Bland was found dead in a Waller County jail cell, three days after a Texas traffic stop over a lane change escalated into a forcible arrest. Her death was ruled a suicide, but it became a flashpoint for demands around police accountability and jail transparency.
Mara: Tee Slaves connects to that story personally. The post notes they were the same age, birthdays only weeks apart. She says, “She is one of the reasons I found my voice during the Black Lives Matter movement. Eleven years later, I still struggle to make sense of the kind of danger so many Black Americans feel while driving, walking, standing, or simply existing.”
Pip: That personal proximity is what gives the record its weight — this isn’t distance journalism set to a beat.
Mara: The song was actually written in 2022, built over a beat called “No Justice No Peace” by Tedyster on Rapchat. She describes writing it to speak directly, as a Black woman, about safety and justice. The post also names Sonya Massey and Saniyah Cheatham — whose death in NYPD custody in the Bronx renewed calls for accountability — as part of the same continuum the song addresses.
Pip: The title borrows from the broader Me Too movement, but Tee Slaves expands the frame: every person, regardless of race or sex, should move through the world without fear.
Mara: She puts it plainly: “ME TOO is bigger than one case. It’s for every family left searching for answers, every community carrying grief, and every name that deserved to be remembered, whether the country learned it or not.” The song releases as part of her forthcoming project, Connected.
Pip: Remembrance as infrastructure. That’s the argument.
Mara: A protest record four years in the making, released on an eleven-year anniversary — the post makes the case that urgency doesn’t expire on a schedule.
Pip: Some questions just keep asking themselves. More from TREMG next time.
