On their second album together, Ricky Blaze and Bishop Black present more than a record, more than a masterpiece: NAHIMSAYIN was planned like a whole museum exhibit, made to be preserved and presented for generations.
“We want to really push the importance of music as art. I think now we’ve gotten to a point where music seems like a throwaway commodity, and we want to bring back the art component,” Blaze explains. “[It] is a piece of a body of art that shows itself in many forms and digitally is [just] one of them.”
Inspired by visual artist friends, and the pair’s propensity for big picture thinking, the neighbors-turned-collaborators are rolling out an alt-rock-infused, live-performance-informed, feel-good hip-hop album they describe as “luxury hood chic.”
To illustrate the depth of that simple descriptor, something they penned to better explain their blended sound to booking agents, Blaze and Black turn to food metaphors.
“It’s the difference between saying ‘I had a slice of apple pie’ or ‘[I] had [my] grandmother’s apple pie,” Blaze says. “We said a long time ago, if we’re gonna be fast food, we’re gonna be the best version of fast food – we’re gonna be Chick-fil-A.”
Quality ingredients mixed with love is the bread and butter of this larger-than-life album, and the warm fuzzy feeling you get after a homecooked meal is something the duo has strived to bake into every track.
“This is a project that we feel like – no, not that we feel like, that we know – will touch people in different ways,” Black asserts. “You could take it with you. You feel good after you play this album.”
Blaze jumps in with a story about a friend of his who played NAHIMSAYIN for her tween-aged daughter. When the record was finished, the mother gave Blaze a call. “‘This is the first hip-hop album I’ve listened to in a long time that didn’t have a negative connotation to it and my daughter can listen to this,’” Blaze remembers her saying.
“I just think that’s cool. It’s bridging the gap between a parent and child. The hip-hop community has grown. It’s 50 years now, so there’s a lot of adults now who still love hip-hop, who still celebrate hip-hop, and their kids now in[to] hip-hop, but it seems like they’re in two different worlds. This is one of those projects where everybody can enjoy it at the same time. And there’s not a lot of music – a lot of good music, hip-hop – that can do that and not come across as corny.”
Since their last LP, Summer Slam, Vol. 1, came out in 2018, the duo have had ample time to reflect on their artistic intentions and musical directions. Their philosophizing, however, happened alongside producing an internet radio show, “The Blaze x Black Show,” where they interviewed creatives, politicians, and entrepreneurs of color. That didn’t keep the pair busy enough – they kept playing live when and wherever they could, cultivating their full-band performance style that stands out among the hip-hop scene.
“We’re big fans of the live music component. So you know, Blaze x Black and Austin, they fit together,” Black says, making sure to tamp down inner-Texan city-fighting with a shout out to KUTX for playing their music (and this publication for writing about it). “Austin is like our second home.”
NAHIMSAYIN is available digitally and physically only at blazeandblack.com – or you can see it live at Antone’s on Sept. 10.
