I’ve always liked rap music, but I’ve always just been a fan of music in general. It wasn’t until I got into some of the underground raps guy and morespecifically when I dug into classic albums like Blu & Exile‘s Below The Heavens that made me really fall in love with rap; it became my everything. It was a hungry Johnson Barnes a.k.a. Blu who became stronger than voltron when he found the soulful chops of Exile that really took rap to a level that’s very rarely been seen and it rightfully is a classic in most of the sharp music fan minds.
I personally don’t think there’s enough attention shown to just how important this Dirty Science movement was. Aloe Blacc was a rapper working with Exile prior to his breakthrough as a singer and this album Below The Heavens also served as an introduction to Miguel Jontel, an up and coming singer who soon shortened his name to simply Miguel and became a pop sensation. Not to mention Blu himself had a hopeful mainstream outlook as well but the difference with him was his stubborn artistic integrity really stunted any mainstream potential, but it was probably for the better.
Below The Heavens dropped a little over ten years ago on July 17th, 2007 and with this being the 10th anniversary year, they’re doing something special for the album. The duo will be releasing a new project titled In The Beginning: Before The Heavens on October 20th. The project is made up of unreleased material from those early sessions. Song that’s that didn’t make the final cut of the album for whatever reason. If you’re worried this will just be mediocre material, fear not, they just released the lead single “Constellations” and it’s truly magical. Take a listen to the new song below and pre-order the album here.