Over the years, Mello Music Group have provided hip hop fans with countless rewind-worthy projects. And for their latest trick, North Carolina’s L’Orange and Solemn Brigham have teamed up as Marlowe to release a self-titled project for your earholes.
A culmination of years of shared experience, both L’Orange and Mr. Brigham bring their A-game while reminding listeners it’s ok to represent something. There is no norm. This is to glorify all things original.
Often artists best work comes at the point they find themselves a few steps past their emptiest, most hollow moments – in those gaps of time where everyone around them has either crumbled or is left standing in the ruins of experience. The road before them is a void as terrifying as it is hopeful – a space to recover and find catharsis by telling their tale. Metaphors hide their deepest scars while truth is flung as a flag seeking like minded connection, speaking to souls with similar experiences. It is inside these corridors of experience that the best albums rattle with meaning.
Solemn Brigham mines these depths on his debut collaboration with L’Orange. He offers the stories of his survival and growth with an eye towards a future uncharted and more hopeful than his past, all while maintaining not just his composure, but his swagger. L’Orange on the other hand, sits confidently at the helm of production, a ferryman deftly guiding the energy of each track, making the dark and dangerous feel nothing less than exhilarating and fresh.
Locked in at 17 tracks—including “Demonstration,” “Lost Arts” and “The Basement” —Marlowe is a triumph of ambition, a rap bricolage blending prohibition and civil rights-era samples with Asian psychedelic rock flourishes.
Press play below and be sure to pick up Marlowe on Bandcamp, Apple Music or your preferred streaming platform.
