Skywater: Hip-Hop Flowing Like Rain

Water flows without permission. It crosses borders, slips under gates, and moves between worlds carrying memory. It hydrates, heals, and connects us all. For DJ Cavem, the artist, vegan chef, educator, and eco-activist also known as Dr. Ietef Vita, that truth is more than a metaphor  it is music.

His new album, Skywater, arrives not as a collection of tracks but as a storm, a living testimony to the way hip-hop can teach us to grow, heal, and migrate together like water.



Life in the Flow

For two decades, DJ Cavem has stood at the crossroads of hip-hop and ecology. He isn’t just rhyming about gardens he’s planting them. He isn’t just sampling nature he’s amplifying it. His turntables spin alongside seed packets, his rhymes drop alongside recipes, his stages bloom into classrooms and community gardens.

From Oakland to Lagos, Denver to Havana, he teaches through both music and soil. Students have learned how to plant kale between verses, how to compost while the bass kicks, how to recognize that the beat of a drum and the rhythm of rain are part of the same universal song.

This work, this mission, is what shapes Skywater.



The Antithesis of Hip-Hop, Rooted in Earth

In a commercial industry obsessed with algorithms, fame, and disposable streams, Cavem is offering something radical: an album that sounds like rain hitting tin roofs, like roots stretching through soil, like freedom moving across borders.

Skywater is the antithesis of mainstream hip-hop. It’s not product placement; it’s planetary placement. These tracks are rooted in ecology, teaching us to remember that food justice, climate justice, and community justice are all connected.

Each beat is a seed. Each lyric is a root. Each chorus is a call for renewal.



Songs as Storms

Every title on Skywater reads like a weather pattern, a topography of consciousness:
	•	“So What .” challenges indifference, defiance in the face of climate denial and apathy.
	•	“The Lorax” calls back to the guardian of trees, repositioning hip-hop as the caretaker of Earth’s voice.
	•	“Talking Freedom (Remix)” is liberation through rhythm  a sonic revolution that reminds us freedom is never finished, always remixed.
	•	“23rd & Mission” maps the geography of struggle and resilience, anchoring place into sound.
	•	“From the Gate” is both entrance and exodus, the reminder that music and migration are intertwined.

These are not just songs; they are storm systems. They gather, swell, and pour. They soak the ground with memory, teaching us that the music we dance to can also water the seeds of justice.



Crossing Borders Without a Passport

Sky Water : Year of the snake

Golden Gate Park

Frisco Fog

The Lorax

FROM THE GATE

TALKING FREEDOM REMIX

Shango

Oxum femi

UK to France

DROP

Skywater: Hip-Hop Flowing Like Rain

Water flows without permission. It crosses borders, slips under gates, and moves between worlds carrying memory. It hydrates, heals, and connects us all. For DJ Cavem, the artist, vegan chef, educator, and eco-activist also known as Dr. Ietef Vita, that truth is more than a metaphor  it is music.

His new album, Skywater, arrives not as a collection of tracks but as a storm, a living testimony to the way hip-hop can teach us to grow, heal, and migrate together like water.



Life in the Flow

For two decades, DJ Cavem has stood at the crossroads of hip-hop and ecology. He isn’t just rhyming about gardens he’s planting them. He isn’t just sampling nature he’s amplifying it. His turntables spin alongside seed packets, his rhymes drop alongside recipes, his stages bloom into classrooms and community gardens.

From Oakland to Lagos, Denver to Havana, he teaches through both music and soil. Students have learned how to plant kale between verses, how to compost while the bass kicks, how to recognize that the beat of a drum and the rhythm of rain are part of the same universal song.

This work, this mission, is what shapes Skywater.



The Antithesis of Hip-Hop, Rooted in Earth

In a commercial industry obsessed with algorithms, fame, and disposable streams, Cavem is offering something radical: an album that sounds like rain hitting tin roofs, like roots stretching through soil, like freedom moving across borders.

Skywater is the antithesis of mainstream hip-hop. It’s not product placement; it’s planetary placement. These tracks are rooted in ecology, teaching us to remember that food justice, climate justice, and community justice are all connected.

Each beat is a seed. Each lyric is a root. Each chorus is a call for renewal.



Songs as Storms

Every title on Skywater reads like a weather pattern, a topography of consciousness:

	•	“So What .” challenges indifference, defiance in the face of climate denial and apathy.

Crossing Borders Without a Passport

SO WHAT .

23rd & Mission

1942

A Hot Winter - BEAT BY DJ CAVEM

Dr. Ietef Vita (DJ Cavem) is a music educator award￼Grammy-nominated artist, vegan chef, and environmental
activist whose work bridges music, culture, and sustainability. Founder of Plant Based
Records and the Prana to the People wellness series, he has performed on the White House
Lawn, appeared in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ice on Fire, and served as a James Beard Awards
committee member. Through his international residencies and performances, he cultivates a
movement that unites art, ecology, and community healing across borders.