Akron Ohio’s dynamic hip-hop duo Free Black! beautifies our sunset with three tracks from their brand-new album Freedom Summer, inspired by the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 which had a significant impact on The Civil Rights Movement. This album dropped July 16th and can be heard in its entirety here. Note the inclusion of this session’s audio as well as the album versions when you download from Bandcamp!

Here is what Floco Torres had to say about these tracks:

“The Elizabeth Keckley Award” - The original name for this tune was “Ms. Lincoln” but we changed it to “The Elizabeth Keckley Award" to honor Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a successful seamstress, activist & author in D.C. She was also a confidante to the 1st lady Mary Todd Lincoln. We'll make songs & sit on them for a bit to just see how they take shape. We always try & make sure that if we can celebrate our history & put a jam out at the same time, we do that.

“Sean Jones” - In honor of the amazing trumpeter & composer Sean Jones. When I first heard this beat, it made me think about stories my grandparents would tell me for some reason. That's where I got the chorus from: "My grandma said always show some love to the ones before you..." & I kinda freestyled the first verse & it grew from there. A lot of times, our songs are just my imagination running with whatever the beat sounds like since HR3 & I usually work remotely. It's a lot of emailing, phone calls, & then we try the songs at the shows & talk about how people reacted afterwards. All the songs on our new album got reactions that stuck with us.

“Ain’t Love” - I wrote “Aint Love” at 6am one morning after being stuck on this beat for 3 months. I had a dream that I was in the movie Wall Street & I was walking behind Gordon Gekko & Derrion. I don't know why it took us (society) so long to understand this but love can be given & received in a lot of different ways & I wanted to talk about that. Also, the 80's was a sick ass time haha.

What’s a picturesque roof top session without Free Black!'s favorite EQD pedals? A subtle classic Pyramids in ‘barber pole up’ was added to samples, while Avalanche Run gives HR3’s drums and Floco’s vocals just a sprinkle of reverberated delay. Plumes is being used as a vocal mic boost, with Rainbow Machine / Pyramids tastefully applied for some undeniable punch.

Free Black! is: Floco Torres & Holbrook Riles III

Video Producer/Editor: Chris Tran

Audio Engineer/Mix/Camera Operator: Jeff France

Camera Operator: Dave Whited

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