Blaq Poet, Serious Truth - Cultural Revolution
In the wake of the George Floyd murder at the hands of the Minneapolis police, all of us were shocked, angry, let down with the state of our country and the world. Like artists do, Blaq Poet & Serious Truth decided to take the passion in the anger caused by the social climate and economic oppression they’ve experienced and put it into something creative. They set out not only to address the struggle against the police, and the class struggle as a whole, but also to create a resurgence in hiphop being the voice of the streets. Hip hop as it was before the hostile corporate takeover.
The plan is to wrestle the culture back from the hands of the CEOs of major record labels and cultural gentrifiers, to negate the attitude of “every man for himself” so prevalent within hiphop and replace it with solidarity, to display a symbolic racial solidarity during a time in which tensions are extremely high.
The songs on this project address dystopia and street life from a first person perspective, while teaching lessons on revolutionary violence and touching base on a multitude of subjects whether it’s just a subtle metaphor or overtly in your face. These songs are written from the perspective of an insurgent on the streets of any major American city in 2020, vivid imagery for those who are far removed from the front lines. All of this is fused together with a traditional east coast vibe. This project cuts deep into the contemporary American struggle and delivers a graphic discourse documenting the lives of two artists, from two different walks of life, sharing a similar struggle.
Blaq Poet & Serious Truth share the brunt of the writing and performing with one feature from John Jigg$ of MXNXPXLY Musicon the song “Heavy Industry”.
DJ Grazzhoppa lays down a great deal of the hooks with his scratching mastery.
Serious Truth handles the overall production and executive production, dictating the direction of the album and how it will sound from front to back.
Christian Godinho handles the mixing and mastering on behalf of Silver Sound Broadcasting, each song is mixed on Pro Tools 11 in the analog to digital method, using an array of compressors, eqs, saturation and tone plugins made by Universal Audio. The mastering is done on Steinberg Wavelab Pro 9.5.
The cover art was done by Serious Truth in a program called Affinity Designer.
This album will be released on November 3rd, 2020 by Aggravated Mayhem Records in conjunction with Mad Men Entertainment.