Jaylen Strong’s practice is concerned with grief-cartography poetics and seeking for answers about living as a traumatized body. He is a poet, community organizer, and songwriter artist oriented at finding pockets of freeness. With "Sooner the Rain" Strong presents his debut ambient research-informed hip-hop experience “Sooner The Rain” as a re-narrativizing of the murder of his eldest sister, Jasmine Moss, who was expecting her first child. She was murdered by the baby’s father, Moss’ estranged boyfriend at the time. The songs in this project are pieces of bereavement rubbed against calls for jubilance amid the heart-aching fight with never abating grief. To have lost a close sibling early in his adolescence was malleable to who Strong would become, but in this project he takes those memories of death, family, and survival to be integral to his outlook, yet not the overarching narrative of his destiny. For him there is still life to live and rain to listen to.