Soul Inscribed – Tune Up

Do you remember when you first heard The Roots? The live instrumentation plus tight rhymes blew everyone’s minds, including this author. The Heavy Rhyme experience did the same. BNH x live rappers also changed hte game. The sounds of these two projects were so organic, they still stand up to the test of time and really sound great today. Enter Soul Inscribed. Embodying the whole spirit of New York City proper as well as a sound that sounds like your Mom and Dad’s vinyl crates remixed for modern times, this hip hop and spoken word collective have been cutting their teeth for years on stages, playing for live audiences, honing their craft, improvising both jazz and freestyle hip hop, and tightening up the sound which we hear today. Made up of Baba Israel (emcee/ production), Grace Galu (vocalist), Duv (vocalist)Sean Nowell (sax, flute, FX), Doren Lev (Drums), and Yako 440 (Instrumentation/ production), the band creates their own unique and eclectic aural journey that includes dub, jazz, afrobeat, and more. This project, Tune Up is co-produced by the Manchester-based producer Irfan Rainy and is the first on Tokyo Dawn Records. Via music, the band shares experiences of the struggle of surviving and making it in New York City as well as their own social commentary on the current state of these United States as it were right now. It’s a trip through many genres rolled into one to spread a message. Disco, soul, house, hip hop, jazz, afrobeat mix together like the melting pot of people that inhabit this earth, fused together by beats and blood, sweat, and tears. It’s the band’s passion for many styles that helps propel this message to the masses and it works flawlessly. Years later, people are going to be saying: “When I first heard Soul Inscribed….” like the De La record. It’s a call to action, it’s a stark reality of what was and what is in NYC, it’s a fusion of various styles that lend themselves to the spirit of past messages from the elders and new messages from the revolutionaries. Out today, August 3rd, stream the entire record and watch the crowd sourced fan video for “Home Is Free” below.

Crowd sourced video:

Get the record here.

Dig Deeper!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s