(AllHipHop News) After two years, Ab-Soul is finally making his rounds in the press to promote his upcoming new album These Days. In a recent interview with Life+Times, the outspoken TDE lyricist reveals what delayed his album, the meaning behind the title These Days and more.
Ab-Soul says he recorded the majority of the album at Mac Miller’s studio and had his album months after Schoolboy Q revealed his Oxymoron release date in December of 2013. According to Soul, the delay on the release of his album was due to Top Dawg Entertainment’s album release schedule:
I turned the album in at the beginning of the year and Schoolboy Q had just gotten a release date for his album, so we had decided to push my album back in order to let Q’s project breathe and to also let Isaiah Rashad run, let SZA run and to keep building the anticipation for my album.
Prior to completing These Days, Soul voiced his displeasure at an October 2013 XXL cover of the Black Hippy crew that was titled “Kendrick Lamar and Black Hippy”. This has caused rumors to circulate of Soul’s dissatisfaction in the group, rumors he insinuates are not totally wrong:
Everybody doesn’t speak English. The world is a big place, man. I can only be me. I can’t really expect everybody to be on board 100 percent with what I’m doing without them ever even having a conversation with me. They don’t even know me for real. With that said, I enjoy it. I like to hear what someone from the outside who’s looking in would say, because a lot of the time they are right.
Ab-Soul and Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Dagneroo Kipawaa revealed the These Days album title on his personal Twtiter account last month. The title is meant to encompass the current times as Soul views them:
Originally, I didn’t want a super conceptual title. I didn’t want to freak anybody out. A lot of people do like that concept-driven perspective and that’s cool, but I just wanted to loosen up a bit. I wanted to make the overall concept broader. I wanted it to be like a time capsule to represent where I’ve been between my last project and this one.
There is no word on These Days release date. Earlier this month, Kipawaa informed fans on his personal Twitter account that they would be able to choose the release date for These Days out of four possible dates: June 3rd, June 10th, June 17th or June 24th. Ab-Soul will be headlining the afterparty for
Check out the full interview here.