It’s been nearly half a decade since the East Coast cloud-rap duo The Underachievers released a new album (barring 2019’s Beast Coast LP alongside Flatbush Zombies and friends). In the meantime Issa Gold and AKTHESAVIOR have been pursuing their own paths, with the latter most recently teaming up with beatmaker Lordfubu for the aptly titled Hiatus before returning this summer for the solo venture Tracing Patterns. Now the emcee is already announcing another new project planned for next year: another full-length release paired with an exciting voice in instrumental hip-hop, this time the Nepalese lo-fi producer sagun.
To get a sense of what the still-untitled project might sound like, today the duo are sharing their first collaborative single, “No Scars,” which blends AK’s brooding vocals with sagun’s drill-by-way-of-chillwave instrumental. Despite the track’s moodiness, AK notes that it was born from a period of healing, as the period had provided him with a new perspective on things. “I had just gotten into a car accident, I felt betrayed by someone I trusted, the world news was relentlessly negative,” he recalls. “It felt like there was a bunch of cynicism and obstacles in my life that I was reflecting on. This song became the solution for the issues I was going through. sagun and I created it to help anyone listening that might be trapped in a certain state of mind. Sometimes our problems are really within the way we think, and how we process the situations we go through.”
The track lands alongside a contemplative video directed by Nick Welch that sees AK thinking things over on a camping trip out in the wilderness. Check it out below, and stream the track here.
