Indie-rap fans lamented the news when Sole parted ways with Anticon, the label he founded, a few years back. But ever since he moved to Colorado, burned his tax return (video since removed), and became a figurehead of the local Occupy movement, the poet/rapper has been steadily maintaining a fiercely DIY, #based-level-prolific approach to the business of making music. His next album is due May 1 via his own Black Canyon imprint, and it’s aptly titled No Wising Up No Settling Down. While earlier tastes from the forthcoming LP are more overtly political and positively aggro (see “I Think I’m Emma Goldman” and “Insurgent Rap”), new track “Extremophile” deals in ruminative poetry and gloriously spaced-out sounds.
The latter come thanks to well-loved London producer Gold Panda, and as for the words: “The song is a Keruoac-ian poem about about science and civilization using space as the canvas…a concept which we’ve projected our hopes and dreams onto,” Sole explains. “An extremophile is an organism that can survive in climates that are hostile, [where] it was previously believed that no life could exist. It’s an apt metaphor for the independent artist in 2013.”
Big Pauper directs the accompanying video, turning a hacked VHS player into a beautiful propaganda machine spewing colorfully cracked images to match the track. No Wising Up also features production from Hood Internet, Dosh and Skyrider. Word to Carl Sagan.
Sole, No Wising Up No Settling Down track list:
1. “Introfukyall”
2. “The Trap”
3. “Civil War”
4. “Insurgent Rap”
5. “My Veganism”
6. “People Piss Me Off”
7. “I Think I’m Emma Goldman”
8. “Genealogy of Giving a Fuck”
9. “Gangster of Love”
10. “Extremophile”
11. “303 Ways to Die”
12. “Prole”
13. “No Wising Up”
14. “War on Self”
