New ab soul album1/19/2024 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.
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