The time has come: Blueprint is set to release his sophomore LP for Rhymesayers Entertainment. The album, Adventures in Counter-Culture, drops on March 1st, 2011. You might know Blueprint from projects like Soul Position, his MC/DJ collaboration with the masterful RJD2, but while RJ’s beats bring out great things in this rapper, Blueprint is a serious beatmaking threat in his own right, as we saw on albums like 1988. Now Print is back at it, gearing up to release his first album in close to 5 years. According to the Rhymesayers press release, Adventures in Counter-Culture “touches on Blueprint’s cynicism with the world, his disdain for pop culture, the state of politics and an apathetic, uninspired society. The album encompasses every facet of music Blueprint knows. It blurs genre lines and connects his hip hop pedigree with his early days in the church choir, to the R&B bands he was a part of in high school, to his new found interest in rock and electronic music.” If the album’s first single, “Radio-Inactive,” is any indication of what this album might have in store, Blueprint may have truly created his best work to date. The track combines haunting piano, crunchy lead synths, and distorted guitars over a knocking beat that drives its melody home with the force of a sledgehammer. Lyrically, Blueprint is as confident and clever as ever, expounding on the flawed commercialism of the music industry, the worthless monotony of commercial radio, and the meaning and fulfillment he sees in pursuing art that really moves him. The song is something of a manifesto for the independent hip-hop artist in modern music industry, powerfully constructing a credo of hard work, raw creativity, and self-liberation. “I made this in basement where you wasn’t even there,” he claims on the song, “to express my feelings, NOT to be played on the air.”
Check out the brand new video for “Radio-Inactive” below, and if you like what you hear, make sure sure to check out Adventures in Counter-Culture when it drops in March.
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