(AllHipHop News) California rhymer Vince Staples is ready to return with his next musical body of work on June 23.
In an interview with LA Weekly, Staples talked about the artistic direction of his upcoming release titled Big Fish Theory.
“All I can tell you is that it’s current. It’s tomorrow. It’s next Thursday,” said the 23-year-old artist. “We making future music. It’s Afrofuturism. This is my Afrofuturism. There’s no other kind.”
The term “Afrofuturism” refers to an aesthetic which combines science fiction, fantasy, and Afrocentrism.
Works by notable music acts like George Clinton, Jimi Hendrix, Sun-Ra, Missy Elliott, OutKast, Janelle Monáe, Solange, and FKA Twigs have been connected to the philosophy.
Filmmakers Sama’an Ashrawi and Steven Jackson recently launched an animated docu-series highlighting performers that embrace Afrofuturism.
“We noticed a growing online trend of people asking for more Afrofuturism-related content and decided to make these brief explainer videos about important figures related to the lens of Afrofuturism – but we didn’t want them to be like a boring lecture, we wanted them to be fun. And I think they turned out very fun,” Ashrawi told AllHipHop.com in April.
Vince Staples’ journey into the world of Afrofuturistic ideas follows his critically acclaimed Summertime ’06 album which has been described as a coming-of-age story set in LA.
It appears Big Fish Theory will be a departure – both conceptually and stylistically – from the No I.D. protégé’s 2015 debut LP.
“If a photographer took the same picture over and over again, you’d call them crazy, right? If an architect built the same house, if a designer made the same clothes, if a painter made the same painting – we’d all discredit them,” explained Staples on the need to constantly switch things up. “Then why do we expect musicians, and rappers specifically, to do the same thing over and over and over?”
