Andre Altrez | photo by Cheyenne Chapman | courtesy of the artist
PREMIERE: Philly rapper André Altrez steps out with his blissed-out debut Sprout
This Thursday, Philadelphia based rapper producer Andre’ Altrez will be self-releasing his debut project, Sprout: an EP full of blissful, lo-fi hip hop songs.
The music is built around melodic jazz and ambient-tinged beats with clever rhymes that are alternately swaggering and introspective. This is hip-hop that is youthful, vaporous and chilled out.
The EP opens with “Float” a druggy fantasy-island jam which finds Altrez dropping a stream of free-associative rhymes on top of a soft, atmospheric track with grainy and a minimal guitar loop. The song is pure audio escapism with a catchy Aaliyah-inspired hook “Come with me and float…let me be your hiiiiiiiigh.” Throughout, Sprout is chock full of solid musical ideas from the heavy Bollywood-influenced trap banger “Odaja” to the dreamy lo-fi boom-bap haze of “Shy Song”.
Sprout’s laid back rhymes and colorful instrumentals align comfortably with the EP’s conceptual origins. It is inspired by a recent road trip to California in which Altrez carried a cotton seed from the West Coast and planted it back home. The plant that eventually grew and would become featured on the project’s album cover. In the lead-up to the EP’s release, Altrez created a multimedia, pop-up installation called Eternal Bloom, which acted as a sister piece to Sprout.
Hosted at Girard Hall (the Fishtown DIY venue that Altrez helps manage), Eternal Bloom featured a hanging installation composed of preserved flowers and light fixtures while the music from
Sprout was performed for the exhibition’s attendees.
Listen to Sprout below and grab a free download on Thursday, June 16th via andrealtrez.bandcamp.com.