We’re honored to be part of Adam J. Dunn’s #LAAB (Lights and a Backdrop) video series. This is the series’ 8th (!) season. I also had a song way back in season 2, and I might have a surprise coming later.

This batch also features new music from Toki Wright & Big Cats, Chantz Erolin, Longshot and more. Check out all eight seasons HERE, and get a great look at what makes the Twin Cities music scene so special.

I love this song. Hope you enjoy it. Get the whole album here.

The Sifu Hotman album is officially out tomorrow, but I realized that we’re not on a label and don’t have to conform to any Tuesday release dates so here it is now:

Embrace the Sun by SIFU HOTMAN (Guante x deM atlaS x Rube)

That’s the new project, including brand new songs, remastered versions of our old songs (which you can still get on vinyl here), and more. If you like it, it’s only $5 so please consider buying it.

Like with any new release, the status right about now is a mixture of intense pride, pre-emptive disappointment, fear, guilt from putting so much emotional weight on something so unimportant (in the grand scheme of what’s going on in the world right now), and flat-out relief.

We made something really special. I’m trying to be as objective as possible, and not let the whole delusional artist ego thing mess me up, but I think it’s okay for me to say: this album is good. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever helped create. It does something different, in a powerful way. It says something honest and meaningful even when it’s not an explicitly political or serious album. And it bangs. That’s where that aforementioned “intense pride” comes in.

And since we’ve all found a lot of success over the past year (I mean, Josh especially, but me and Rube too, haha), the logical assumption would be that this really good thing that three successful people have made will take off.

And it almost certainly won’t.

I don’t say that out of humility, or pessimism, or sour grapes. I say it because music like this, no matter how well-liked we are in other spheres, or how hard we work to get it heard, is hard to market. Hell, music in general is hard to market these days, if you’re talking about getting people to spend money on something. But some bass-heavy, throwback punchline rap made by people who are known for doing… not that… it’s off-message. It doesn’t push the brand. It’s bad marketing.

Just to reiterate: this isn’t sour grapes. I’m not saying that something is wrong with the universe because I’m not making lots of money off selling CDs. It’s actually the opposite—this is about gratitude.

I love that we can go off-brand and still knock it out of the park like this, and I’m incredibly grateful to the people who do “get” it. Anyone who came to our release show, or buys this online, or follows any of us on social media—it really does mean a lot. In some ways, it means more than it did ten years ago, or five years ago.

Like I said in this interview, this album was made for the love. We hope you’ll play it loud in your cars. We hope you’ll share it with your friends and post it on your Tumblrs. But mostly, we just hope you’ll like it, that you’ll find something in it the same way we found something while creating it.

Music video for “First Ave Funeral” coming soon.

I know new songs have a certain shininess to them, but this is still maybe my favorite song I’ve ever made. Shout to Rube for providing this beat and deM atlaS for providing his spirit and energy.

And there’s more where this came from. Be the first to hear everything at our release show, Friday, July 25 at Intermedia Arts in MPLS. 7pm. All ages. $5. House of Dance Twin Cities will also be performing.

If you’re not in the Twin Cities, you can get the whole project, “Embrace the Sun,” on July 29. We’re all really proud of it. Thanks for listening.

This is the second song I’ve made with Katrah-Quey, a producer whom I’ve been following for a long time. It was great to finally get to work with him. Here’s the other one we made together, also a free download.

Thought about calling this “A Pragmatist’s Guide to Nihilism,” but this title was too perfect. Please share if you like it.

Lyrics after the jump:

Letter of Resignation

I’m not naturally a nihilist
but I can hear it, I just can’t explain what the science is
I can hear it humming in the depths, the drone
The melody of emptiness, the music of black holes

You want me to wear a name tag
when someday I’ll no longer be moving?
You want me to punch in on time
when the heat death of the universe is looming?
You want me to do the dishes
when ancient gods consider us less than slime?
You want me to smile at the customers?
Sorry boss I got bigger things on my mind

A million years in the future,
alien archaeologists are digging up the mall of america
My skeleton is laughing hysterically,
poetry carved into my bones very carefully
Apparently the instruments tickle;
takin’ flight like a paper kite on sonic vibrations and laser light
They will scan every inch of my remains
and take mental notes with their big computer brains
They might find that I stood about five-nine
and weighed about 90 kilograms while alive
They might find that my skull cavity
was just big enough to fit a bunch of fantasies
and a capacity for imagining something better
than the circumstances that my senses could register
And if they look into my skull’s steady gaze
they might find the pocketful of fucks I never gave

You want me to wipe the countertop?
Have you even thought about the vast emptiness we’re immersed in?
You want me to tuck my shirt in
when our victories are hollow and our doom is certain?
Where is the god who created burger king
and if he’s so powerful why can’t i get a raise?
You want me to come in on saturday?
sorry boss i got bigger things on my plate

So when you ask me about my plan B
I just hope you can see why I’m laughing
Y’all are scared of the bill collector
I’m scared of the immensity of space/time
I’m scared of my propensity to waste time
on stuff like bein’ scared, I’d run but there’s nowhere to escape time
and that’s why I took a lotta break time
‘Cause who cares if customers are impatient:
our whole existence is a millisecond in infinity
so they can hurry up and get to waitin’ I’m sayin’ you want
me for your workforce or whatever?
Picture me givin’ a damn; I said pass what you owe me
for this whole week and i’m gone
on some homie, see you when we reach the beyond
if there is one… daydreams are insidious
when the architexture of your heart is non-euclidian

Here’s my new project. It’s one 30-minute track. Download it for FREE here:

Experimental mixtape. Nine brand new songs mixed into one track. All beats jacked from Dungeon Family (Goodie Mob, Outkast, Cool Breeze, etc.) songs. Mixed by Big Cats.

1. Chill Touch
2. Knock
3. Fireball
4. Crushing Despair
5. Raise Dead
6. Chain Lightning
7. Prismatic Spray w/ Homeless, Heidi Barton Stink, Tony the Scribe, Kaoz, Just Wulf & See More Perspective
8. Greater Shout
9. Mage’s Disjunction

All I ask in return is, if you like it, to sign up for my email list. And to go along with all this new music, here are pretty much all my thoughts on it:

My plane touches down in Atlanta as I’m listening to the final mix of DUNGEONS for the first time. It’s just a stop on my way to New Orleans, where I’ll be performing at a conference on sexual assault prevention on college campuses, but it’s a nice moment. Hip hop is always about the conversation between past and present; these beats have roots in this city. I wonder how many people will hear that call and response, how much it matters.

Goodie Mob and Outkast were my entry points into hip hop. Before Wu-Tang, before Nas, before Pharcyde, before all of the other artists I’d name as influences, it was those two groups (and their extended crew, the Dungeon Family). Part of this project is paying homage; part of it is really highlighting how ahead of their time that crew was.

I’ve been extremely intentional about everything in my career so far. DUNGEONS is really the first project I’ve done just because I want to, just to clear my head. Some songs are leftovers from the You Better Weaponize sessions. Some are kind of random freewrites. I wrote “Crushing Despair” when I was like 19. Some are brand new songs written to bridge these other songs together into a cohesive whole that can almost be called a concept album. Some of them are really good, some of my best writing. Some are okay.

That’s part of the theme here, at least for me. Letting go. Moving on. The mixtape isn’t perfect, but I need to put it out, to get it out. I’m always haunted by old songs. But what could have been a random collection of cannibalized rejects (like a lot of mixtapes) has kind of turned into something I can be proud of. Again, it’s not perfect. The posse cut is kind of… messy. None of the songs are catchy pop hits. It gets a little unwieldy at points. But it’s very much an authentic documentation of where my head has been at this past year.

So what’s the concept? It probably makes sense to start with what isn’t the concept first. It’s called DUNGEONS because all the beats are jacked from Dungeon Family songs and all the song titles are Dungeons & Dragons sorcerer spells, level one through level nine. But those are both just organizing principles, arbitrary rules I set for myself to help focus my writing. The actual concept is something more than a gimmick.

The album talks about bullying, about economic and social violence, about resistance and activism, and more. A running motif is the power/magic inherent in language, how words shape reality. That’s getting close to the concept, I guess. I don’t want to over-explain this one (ha). It is what you take from it.

I probably tend to over-explain my work because it’s always going to be under-explained elsewhere. We’re all underrated. Every MC I know doesn’t get the attention they deserve. A masterpiece LP, a new single, a mixtape, a promo video, a show announcement– they all get the same amount of ink, the same cursory glance, the same obligatory surface-level props. We’re all pigeon-holed, often early in our careers, and we can never shake those labels. Releasing a rap album is like having a kid, being a great parent for five years, and then dropping that kid off on the very first day of school; it’s just that the “school” is full of 19 year-old drunk white boys.

I’m not too stressed about this one, though. Because I made it pretty much just for myself, it’s okay if it doesn’t get ten thousand downloads in the first week. I’m not doing any videos, singles, release parties, or even a big press push. But this whole decision-making process HAS made me think more about what success looks like, and what I want to be doing in the years to come.

It’s as easy to rationalize success as it is to rationalize failure. I know I’m not alone in this– the life of an artist (I’m happy to say this is my actual job, and has been for 2-3 years now) is a constant inflation and deflation of the ego. On the negative side: everyone’s playing bigger shows than me, this new video has more YouTube views than my new video, this other artist gets more love from the press even though they have nothing to say, etc. And on the positive side: my work has a much larger impact because it’s actively challenging the audience with specific critiques and action points, I probably make more money on the college circuit than a lot of better-known MCs on the club circuit, even when my videos have fewer views, they’re actually saying something important, the people I respect respect me, etc.

And both sides of this dance make good points. For me, I know that I AM doing really good work and having a concrete impact on my world. I also know, however, that I could have a much bigger impact. There’s always a new plateau.

So what does all this have to do with DUNGEONS? The project is fairly obviously not about me getting famous. It’s not a good promotional strategy to say that this is a “stepping stone” or “detour,” but that’s kind of what it is. That “next plateau,” for me, isn’t necessarily selling out the Mainroom or getting posted on all the big rap blogs. That’s not defeatist; that’s having an intentional strategy and making my own way. The more experienced I get, the more I figure out what my strengths, passions and experiences are pointing me toward. And I just caught a clear glimpse of that this past year.

In some ways, DUNGEONS is wholly unrelated to that “something” I caught a glimpse of. In other ways, it is inextricably bound to it. I hate to be abstract and mysterious like that, but I’m hoping it’ll all make sense in time. Thanks for listening.

UPDATE: here’s a track-by-track breakdown.