Subsequent month our 2022 Artist To Watch Rhys Langston unveils his new album Pale Black Damaging. Thus far the LA musician has launched “Ate The Tuning Fork Whereas I Taxied In The Crepuscular” with Open Mike Eagle, “Once I’m Squared With Happiness,” and “When The Orchestra Is Dreaming” with Mike Ladd, and now he’s again with “It Jes Grew (Proper Outta Me).”
“In the summertime of 2021 I casually sat down at my Minilogue synth and located a chord patch, which introduced me to a drum loop, then my acoustic guitar, electrical bass, and at last a shaker,” Langston informed Flood concerning the new (and closing) single. He continued:
A number of months prior I had learn Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and so once I constructed the music’s preliminary loop, the sung phrase “it jes grew” and the melodic construction of the B a part of the music got here out totally fashioned. Over the next months, attempting to therapeutic massage the composition, construct out the intro half, after which supply some samples and foley, it grew to become, frankly, a jumbled mess. Nevertheless, round a yr later in 2022, I made a decision to take a seat down with the music once more. Over the course of some weeks I fine-tuned the association, wrote the intro rap, and gently aggravated my pals to ship me some clips of them speaking about their hair. Now, in 2025, the 6:21 runtime joint arrives, an ancestrally related piece about hair, whirling by means of many sonic and historic references and areas. By some means I discovered room for my voice and drew my very own throughline within the continuity of Black diasporic music.
Pay attention under.
Pale Black Damaging is out 6/11 on his personal Black Market Poetry label. Pre-order it right here.