My first new song in almost two years lies below this post, behind the paywall. Catch me performing it and other new material in Seattle (Clock Out Lounge) on October 24 as part of the Abyssinian Creole “Sexy Beast” 20th Anniversary celebration.
Back around 2006, in the early days of Massline, the idea for a collaborative record between myself and Gabriel Teodros (aka GT) came about, a side project of another side project called Good Medicine (us two plus Khingz and Macklemore) which existed mostly as a live performance group with a few demo tracks that hadn’t surfaced until very recently.
One song we started writing but never recorded was titled Empire Way—the original name of the Seattle arterial road that was later renamed Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. The song title stuck and became the idea for either an album title or a group name or both.
In 2007, GT’s debut record Lovework and the second Blue Scholars album Bayani were released months apart. As those records cooked, our main quests took precedence while our side quest became yet another idea out of many that incubated, had potential, but never materialized.
Fast forward seventeen years later. GT been producing on the low, first to make air break music for his shows on KEXP, then producing his own songs, and finally throwing beats to fellow rappers. Almost exactly a year ago, he sent me a massive folder of instrumental sketches to write to. And he kept sending em. Probably over a hundred of them, easily. I wrote and recorded a bunch of drafts that sat for awhile, then picked back up in the last few months, realizing along the way that we had an album in the making, completely unplanned.
Listening back to what I had written, I kept thinking about the name of our abandoned project from way back. Empire Way. There couldn’t be a more a fitting album title. The reasons why will become evident and obvious when it’s out in the wild.
We’re forgoing a release centered on big streaming services and social media. It’ll arrive there eventually but will emerge in the dark forest first. There will be a physical release in multiple mediums. I’ve decided to split the project into two parts, with Volume 1 rolling out in waves in Q4 2025 and Volume 2 coming in Q1 2026. There will be eight tracks in each volume.
The first place any of this new material will land will be right here in this publication, so…
NEW SHIT!
For those with a paid subscription—thank you, enjoy this exclusive listen of the most complete-mixed track, and have a great weekend.
“IRL” 👇
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