Newman, from North Carolina, covers all of those grounds with his latest album, Elmina. It is a concept heavy project that is best told directly from the emcee.
“Elminá is a slave castle on the coast of Ghana, where my family is from. My last trip was in the summer of 2016. I had a lot going on personally and a lot of music recorded up to that point but at the time I hit a wall. I had been to Elmina a couple of years before that last visit but going back at that time resonated with me and was a point of inspiration.
I originally titled it “Postcards From Elmina”, because I wanted to frame it as a letter or each song as its own story. The acts came with the contrast in sounds between the two. The first part was a lot of the main concepts and initial feelings from that visit. A lot of the second came from when I went to Italy. I was thinking a lot about the idea of freedom, different ways that might look and feel.”
“Elmina” has already exceeded expectations and brought the artist into new territory with groundbreaking, genre-bending, and intelligent music. Stream the full project above on Soundcloud.