We spoke to Ab-Soul for his first proper interview in many years in advance of his fifth album, Herbert. It's his best album by a chasmic margin – read our conversation here.
, was tapped by the L.A. indie legend Murs to go on the Paid Dues Tour. It couldn’t have come sooner. While the quartet was on the road, Soul’s grandparents’ record store closed its doors for good. “We’d been on the verge,” he says, “but it was like I got a job right when I lost another.” the album that would serve as his introduction to most rap fans around the country. Though Lamar and Q had signed joint agreements with Interscope, Soul’s record was issued by TDE alone.
Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Schoolboy Q and Ab-Soul backstage during the 2013 Budweiser Made In America Festival at Benjamin Franklin Parkway on September 1, 2013 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.is venomous. Soul’s punchline-first style exists on a razor’s edge; his diction is so clear and pacing so languid that he ends up working to oversell underwhelming lines or sinking deep into dorm-room philosophy .
When Soul talks about his life, he draws long arcs, ebbs, and flows of happiness and stability. Whilewas a creative success and made him a dark-horse favorite among Black Hippy fans, he isn’t proud of how it warped his personality. “It created a level of arrogance,” he says. “I felt I had a style I’d created that the people gravitated to. I was getting recognized by my idols. That made me feel like, ‘I did what I came to do.
Soul had always rapped about drugs, but in the mid-2010s, their place in his songs became worrisome — stark revelations on pieces meant to unnerve the audience did so all too easily, and some records conceived as party fodder ended up having the same effect. “D.R.U.G.S.,” from 2016’s glitchy, sullenis sincerely upsetting; you imagine close friends, after being emailed the demo, reaching out to be sure he was O.K. It sounds as if some did.
. Though he willfully shut out all contemporary rap — “I didn’t want any flows, no beat selection” from anyone else to encroach on his process, he says — he invited more feedback from his inner circle than ever before. “I dropped the arrogance for this album,” he explains. “I didn’t argue [when someone was unimpressed by a demo]. As soon as someone was like, ‘Ehh,’ I pressed next — I dropped the, ‘Ah, man, you didn’t hear what I said?’” This does not immediately strike one as a good idea.
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