Adrian Younge Talks New Concept Album With Souls Of Mischief, Narrated By Ali Shaheed Muhammad

Today on Sway In The Morning, producer/musician Adrian Younge and hip-hop group Souls of Mischief announced that they'd be releasing a joint album via RZA's Soul Temple Records, due out this September. In an interview with XXL earlier this week, Younge dished on the concept behind the album—which has its own storyline, as did Younge's recent output Twelve Reasons To Die with Ghostface Killah—as well as the style and feel of the project, and the involvement of Ali Shaheed Muhammad. Check back later today for the rest of the interview with Younge.—Dan Rys (@danrys)

"The next project is Adrian Younge Presents Souls of Mischief. That’s my next big thing and I’m super happy about that. It's a project that if somebody misses the sounds of 93 'til Infinity meets The Low End Theory meets De La Soul Is Dead. If somebody misses that kind of sound, they’ll be happy to hear this album because it goes back to that time, you know. Kind of like how the Ghostface album [12 Reasons To Die] kind of went back to that time. And I love both styles of music back then, so I’m very, very excited.

"And it’s also a concept album too—Souls of Mischief almost gets killed by some dude that was just crazy and the whole album just starts off with this incident, and then it blossoms into these different stories that are a result of this volatile incident. And that’s basically what that album is about. It’s dope though. It’s really dope. As far as stylistically, it’s kind of like if Bob James and Herbie Hancock recorded with Q-Tip back in the day, you know what I’m saying. That’s the perspective on the album. I was with Ali Shaheed Muhammad yesterday showing him some of the stuff and he was totally getting it because he’s going to be the narrator on this album, like how RZA was sort of the narrator for Ghost [on 12 Reasons], that’s what Shaheed’s going to be doing. It’s Native Tongues shit, you know what I’m saying, so that’s what I’m super psyched about.

"I mean it’s done now; I’m just touching stuff up. But it’s pretty much done. It’s going to be released in September."