Rhys Langston, pound for pound one of the best lyricists in LA, has returned with a new single entitled “It Jes Grew (Right Outta Me),” which features Langston on banjo, guitar, clarinet, synthesizer, and percussion. He also produced the cut (and his entire forthcoming album Pale Black Negative, for that matter), which features a homespun rhythm section backed by that mesmerizing banjo line. From there, Langston moves into swing and soul. Think TV on the Radio meets Afrobeat. Hell yeah.
“This song best encapsulates the kitchen sink approach I took to deconstructing genre on Pale Black Negative,” Langston shares. “I don’t know if I’ll ever make another song where I’m rapping over myself playing banjo, singing to bayou blues guitar, and then tooting clarinet over collaged voices.”
For some backstory, he continues: “In the summer of 2021 I casually sat down at my Minilogue synth and found a chord patch, which brought me to a drum loop, then my acoustic guitar, electric bass, and finally a shaker. A few months prior I had read Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, and so when I built the song’s initial loop, the sung phrase ‘it jes grew’ and the melodic structure of the B part of the song came out fully formed. Over the following months, trying to massage the composition, build out the intro part, and then source some samples and foley, it became, frankly, a jumbled mess. However, around a year later in 2022, I decided to sit down with the song again. Over the course of a few weeks I fine-tuned the arrangement, wrote the intro rap, and gently annoyed my friends to send me some clips of them talking about their hair. Now, in 2025, the 6:21 runtime joint arrives, an ancestrally connected piece about hair, whirling through many sonic and historical references and spaces. Somehow I found room for my voice and drew my own throughline in the continuity of Black diasporic music.”
Pale Black Negative will arrive on June 11, with vinyl editions available via Steel Tipped Dove’s Fused Arrow Records. The digital release is handled by Langston’s own Black Market Poetry. Check out the latest cut below, and pre-order Pale Black Negative here.
