Twenty-twenty vision, I thought that was cute. I thought that was tight with my being vision impaired. How long have you been working on this album? That was the first time anybody ever made me rerecord. So he wanted to make sure I came correct. He liked the verse, but I had to match the frequency of the record, because I guess that was one of his favorite beats. I had to do it about five or six times until he found the right frequency. I’m going to hold you to that.” I knew I needed him this time around. I was like, “Yo, Mac is over here, too.” He’s like, “What? Oh yeah, y’all go crazy.” And we did that off of the love, so Preemo hit me immediately like, “Yo, you went fucking crazy. We was working on some other stuff, and Royce sent me the record. I’ve met him in passing before, but we connected when he did PRhyme. I can honestly say I do get the respect of being the last of the lyricists, that cloth. Before I even had my official stage name, when I was just Snap G, I knew I always wanted a Preemo beat. I’m glad you put it that way, but I never stopped loving rap. I just wanted it to all come from me as naturally as possible. I wanted it to sound like me, and what I wanted it to sound like you could easily just get influenced by what you’re hearing, cadences and flows. I intentionally tried not to listen to much music during this process so I didn’t have too much external influence. On “Gotta Rap,” your song with DJ Premier, you say “I put my life in these sentences, bring the felons in,” “I’ma give this beat a heart attack.” The record just feels concentrated and purposeful.Īh, yeah, but to be more precise, I was just trying to restore the feeling of hip-hop in this climate. Herbert is your first album in six years, and it almost sounds like you fell in love with rap all over again. “Ab-Soul is a character,” he explains to me on a recent afternoon in New York City. “Moonshooter” chronicles his humble beginnings and his ascent through the music industry, and the title track runs through his lifetime of traumas and how he’s begun therapy to deal with them. The rest of Herbert, titled after his birth name, finds him tapping into his upbringing, relying on the people he loves, and spitting some of the hardest rhymes of his career. The music video for his new single “Do Better” bravely revisits his suicide attempt, and a subsequent clip highlights fans’ comments about how the track positively impacted them. On the cusp of releasing his first album in six years, he’s also ready to discuss his darkest moments in detail. Now, the 35-year-old rapper is feeling happy and grateful, thrilled about his return to music and reconnected with the most important figures in his life. He was eventually forced to grapple with the passing of close friends Mac Miller and Doeburger, and during the pandemic, tried to take his own life, in an attempt that eerily mirrored a heartbreaking lyric from his song “The Book of Soul.” After releasing his critically-panned 2016 album Do What Thou Wilt - titled after a foundational text from occultist Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Law - Ab-Soul became distant from his friends and family, falling down his own self-admitted “rabbit hole” of disinformation. He detailed his struggle to cope with the death of his partner and former collaborator Alori Joh by suicide (“Book of Soul”), rapped about seeing an image of Hitler in a photo of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11 (“Terrorist Threats”), and boasted that he could outrap Jay-Z (“Illuminate”).īut things soon began to spiral out of control. On his solo work, like 2012’s Control System, Ab often trafficked in bravado and pain - and the occasional conspiracy theory. The Carson, California, native signed with TDE in 2007, becoming a standout in Black Hippy (the four-man tandem of Soul, Q, Kendrick, and Jay Rock) and later dropping a stunning guest verse on “Ab-Soul’s Outro,” the penultimate track off Kendrick’s 2011 album Section.80. Then there was Ab-Soul, an esoteric, cerebral lyricist who strived to find deeper meaning. Each member had their own specialty: Kendrick Lamar as the conscious, forward-thinking leader Jay Rock as the straightforward street spitter SZA as the then-chillwave R&B songstress ScHoolboy Q as the druggy, charismatic Crip and Isaiah Rashad as the anxious, emotive Southerner. In 2016, Top Dawg Entertainment was enjoying its ascendance as the premier crew in rap through an exquisite balance of major-label polish and independent organicism.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |