Akron Ohio’s dynamic hip-hop duo Free Black! beautifies our sunset with three tracks from their brand-new album “Freedom Summer”, inspired by the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 which had a significant impact on The Civil Rights Movement. This album dropped July 16th and can be heard in its entirety here: https://fanlink.to/FreeBlack
Note the inclusion of this session’s audio as well as the album versions when you download from Bandcamp!
Here is what Floco Torres had to say about these tracks:
“The Elizabeth Keckley Award” - The original name for this tune was “Ms. Lincoln” but we changed it to “The Elizabeth Keckley Award" to honor Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a successful seamstress, activist & author in D.C. She was also a confidante to the 1st lady Mary Todd Lincoln. We'll make songs & sit on them for a bit to just see how they take shape. We always try & make sure that if we can celebrate our history & put a jam out at the same time, we do that.
“Sean Jones” - In honor of the amazing trumpeter & composer Sean Jones. When I first heard this beat, it made me think about stories my grandparents would tell me for some reason. That's where I got the chorus from: "My grandma said always show some love to the ones before you..." & I kinda freestyled the first verse & it grew from there. A lot of times, our songs are just my imagination running with whatever the beat sounds like since HR3 & I usually work remotely. It's a lot of emailing, phone calls, & then we try the songs at the shows & talk about how people reacted afterwards. All the songs on our new album got reactions that stuck with us.
“Ain’t Love” - I wrote “Aint Love” at 6am one morning after being stuck on this beat for 3 months. I had a dream that I was in the movie Wall Street & I was walking behind Gordon Gekko & Derrion. I don't know why it took us (society) so long to understand this but love can be given & received in a lot of different ways & I wanted to talk about that. Also, the 80's was a sick ass time haha.
What’s a picturesque roof top session without Free Black!'s favorite EQD pedals? A subtle classic Pyramids in ‘barber pole up’ was added to samples, while Avalanche Run gives HR3’s drums and Floco’s vocals just a sprinkle of reverberated delay. Plumes is being used as a vocal mic boost, with Rainbow Machine/Pyramids tastefully applied for some undeniable punch.
Free Black! is: Floco Torres & Holbrook Riles III
Video Producer/Editor: Chris Tran
Audio Engineer/Mix/Camera Operator: Jeff France
Camera Operator: Dave Whited
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