There have been plenty of changes in Sole’s rap career since he first picked up a mic in the ’90s, most of which were inspired by events outside of hip-hop. Although his personal life seems to have affected his raps (his kid provides the intro to the rapper’s latest single, for example, while his wife Yasamin worked with him on his albums as Whitenoise), it seems like the majority of the changes to his music have been inspired by national and global politics—the unignorable evils of the world that go largely unexplored in popular music outside of the occasional vague protest song being bankrolled by major labels.
One such pivotal moment within hip-hop occurred in 2014 when Sole linked up with DJ Pain 1—whose impressive resume boasts production work for Public Enemy, Nipsey Hussle, and Ludacris—for their first collaborative LP Death Drive, which provided the start to a fruitful relationship for the pair who’re on the cusp of releasing their fourth full-length of anarchic raps over trap beats together. The first single from their new album Post American Studies is no different—besides being the first track they’ve released from this side of the COVID pandemic and protests that simultaneously flared up across the world in the summer of 2020.
“The title for ‘Surrounded’ was inspired by a Frank Moten panel around the time of the George Floyd rebellions about the concept of ‘The Surround,’” Sole explains. “When I was recording, my three-year-old (at the time) son Winston was listening along and wanted to record, so I put him on the intro. It’s really just me processing parenting and life in general in the first year of the pandemic…experiencing it all from this remote vantage point of semi-rural Maine.”
Hear the new track below.
