'Pale Black Negative' is the 20th project from rapper and multi-instrumentalist Rhys Langston. It crystallizes his 10 year discography of genre abolition, while showcasing his strength as rap’s premier poet-etymologist. Though rapping remains his main instrument, this record fully unveils Langston’s singing talent in equal splendor. Presenting what he calls a “rapper’s singer-songwriter record,” he commandeers guitar, bass, clarinet, synths, banjo, and percussion to couch his poetry in alternative R&B, art rock, trip hop, and even roots blues music. In the 11 songs Rhys Langston’s linguistic eccentricity shows itself as scion of his West Coast forefathers, Freestyle Fellowship, as much as the eclectic production owes its range to his coming of age in the late aughts, listening to indie pioneers TV on the Radio. And read on the page his lyrics might resemble pages from a lost Amiri Baraka manuscript, until they are sung aloud more like Beck (maybe with a little more melanin).

Even with contemporary music’s post-genre conventions, rarely do songs so successfully balance technical, poetic rapping with soulful, genre-fluid melodies. 'Pale Black Negative' compromises in neither form nor fashion. Its impressionist abstractions sit beside emotional candor, its bespoke language stands next to genuine pathos, and its layered harmonies bolster unflinching bars. Some songs were started in 2017 and others took shape in 2022, resulting in a slow cooked opus for our age of endless convenience and instant gratification. Magnum may it be, this product of a shoestring budget, an outdated DAW, and just enough nerve. A sui generis lexicon in poetry and timbre, this is Rhys Langston’s abstract autobiography across an expanse of word and sound.

Now in his own words:

"Sketches of some tracks go as far back as 2017, but it was in 2021 that six of 'Pale Black Negative’s' songs leapt out of me in quick succession. In that year, my musical and conceptual focus had shifted, though not all the way voluntarily. I was grieving the death of my cousin Moziah, who had given me the gigabytes of samples used to make my first five years of beats. And for half of 2021 the stay-at-home orders remained in place. I was trying to understand my artistic process, given that the COVID lockdown had taken a fundamental part of it away: shaping and editing drafts of songs after performing iterations of them live. To top it off, my 10 year old MacBook Pro had been abruptly crashing, forcing me to accept the possibility of making music without recording. Thus, I began to play instruments and think of compositions without a guarantee of immediately capturing them. Coincidentally (and more positively), with no previous experience in the instrument, that year I also inherited a clarinet.

"In spite (or because) of all this, 2021 became a prolific and crowded time creatively. While building the core six songs on 'Pale Black Negative' (tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9), I was between the release of 'Stalin Bollywood,' producing To 'Operate This System' with Pioneer 11, and writing fragments of 'Grapefruit Radio' (though it was nameless at the time). My visual art and poetry practice also bloomed and took moments of primacy and focus. So I let 'Pale Black Negative' develop at its own pace, in the spaces between these other works. Steadily, what came into sharper relief was a consummation of my early adulthood in music. The tracks were slow and careful compositions gleaned from making hundreds of songs in my 20s, and I could not shake the fact that the project’s coalescence and refinement flew in the face of contemporary rap’s conventions.

"Any moderately aware music fan can observe, that over the last 10 years there has been an explosion of a certain style into the hip hop atmosphere: one more instrumentally spare, textured and dreary, with a quasi-monotone rap affect. Over the last decade I have also found myself creating songs in this vein. However (without tarrying too much into my own formal criticisms), in the years building the music of 'Pale Black Negative' (and other concurrent projects), what I found myself hearing was what I warned against in my 'Language Arts Unit' book: that “what we collectively define as alternative is still not somewhat conservative.” With the blessing of my prolific output and slightly hating-ass disposition, I could look inquisitively at whether the alternative and experimental rap landscape was still coloring inside the lines (just different ones). Intact as always was my penchant for abstract and innovative linguistics, but stretching outside of what I had already made (and was making), I knew I wanted harmony, not dissonance. I wanted plush musical moments with dynamic arcs, not rolling, dirge-like (and often drum-less) arrangements in one direction. I sought a romantic edge and softness in an art and process often associated with hardness, whether in gendered bravado or crystallized intellect and wit.

"Shaping the core six songs and expanding them to the 11 they are now, landed me at the beginning of 2023. It was sometime then, listening to the mixes for the 300th time, that I realized I formulated the album I had been trying to make since I was 17 years old: a rap album that was at once personal and abstract, its own inexplicable shade of Black, and something emotionally stirring beyond the lyrics.

"Not unlike my past music, I see 'Pale Black Negative' to be the subconscious, and then intentional, collision of styles, so as to question what is “allowed” to exist in the relationships between content and form, sound and meaning. Much of my earlier music began in the head, with a swollen intellect seeking to fit itself into several pockets of rap styles (see: the aforementioned Language Arts Unit). I understand now that 'Pale Black Negative' began in the body, in an overwhelm of feeling beyond verbiage, an exhaustion of word and wit that spurred me to lead with emotions I could not explain away, even if I wanted to. 'Pale Black Negative' was always a stab in the dark, a fumbling that turned to adjusting my eyes and ears to negative space, groping outward and then finding inward a grounding and direction. Patience be praised, that with persistence and incrementalism I built it as a monument of self-reliance, through writing, recording, producing, mixing, and doing everything in between.

"I knew this album was a big solo statement, planting some seeds in 2017, rummaging my multidisciplinary way through 2021, and making educated guesses with a handful of musical instruments in 2022 and 2023. Its prescience at the beginning of my 30s, though, feels like some prophecy of affirmation from my past self. Several heartbreaks and years on, I have in this tracklist totems to both love and loss. After many years of financial struggles, appraising whether or not a lane existed for me as an artist, I have composed instrumentals that make my broken computer sound like a full band. And now with a greater understanding of past experiences and their tether to my mental health, I can hold onto many lyrics as testaments to getting through.

"This is my 20th musical project released into the world. No label, no team, just a lot of belief in self (and help from Dove on the vinyl pressing).

"Thanks for getting here with me."