Long Beach’s own Vince Staples covers FADER for their June/July Summer Music Issue.
Vince Staples is widely known for his breakthrough album Summertime ’06, but Summer 2016 is treating him much better.
The Def Jam recording artist graces the cover of FADER with the most content facial expression possible in front of a peach-colored background. The long read spans several days in the life of the rapper as he buys a new Mercedes-Benz, waves at dogs and reminisces about his tumultuous childhood.
But, he also manages to share a bit of new info about music that he has in the works. As a follow-up to his 2015 debut album, Staples revealed plans to release a six-song EP titled Prima Donna sometime this summer.
Per FADER:
That evening, as we listen to songs from Staples’s forthcoming Prima Donna EP, the sturdy insulated walls at Hollywood’s Record Plant Studios shake so hard that you envision the platinum plaques falling to the ground. The eyes of the ultra-professional engineers give the “great googly moogly” bulge. Even though this isn’t their first time hearing the EP, they tell Staples they haven’t heard anything like this before. It’s the truth, not idle flattery. With production from James Blake and DJ Dahi, the six-song set starts with a rap star killing himself and concludes with him first coming to fame. You’re meant to be able to play it front-to-back or back-to-front. Either way, it’s a chaotic fusion of warped soul, distorted hooks, and extraterrestrial demonic spirituals. The tentative release date is sometime this summer.
If trap turned self-destruction into the contemporary party soundtrack, Staples’s music details that party getting shot up, the getaway of the killers, and the retaliatory search party that sets off in pursuit. It respects both the one who got shot and the shooter. Prima Donna represents his greatest artistic leap forward: it’s a hyper-musical fusillade of sounds that could be described as psychedelic gangsta rap blues that you could play at 2 a.m. at an underground rave.
In other Staples news, the rapper just launched a new tech-based initiative in his hometown Long Beach that will teach middle schoolers filmmaking, graphic design, music production, 3D printing and product design to teach them high-end technology literacy skills.
Photo: FADER
