Live Review: PREMIERE: African influence and infectious hip-hop meet on VULI's debut, ‘The Upstart’
Meet VULI, who you may know from the hip-hop trio, True Vibernation, and will now definitely know from his first solo track ‘The Upstart’.
Everyone loves Sax. They also love it when hip-hop acts meet with production prowess and whole new sounds are created. Meet VULI, who you may know from the hip-hop trio True Vibenation, and will now definitely know from his first solo track ‘The Upstart’.
Fans of True Vibenation don’t need to fear its demise; the boys are all working on solo projects but still making music together. For Vuli, his solo project will be drawing on all of his musical paths, from saxophone, to production, and of course hip-hop.
‘The Upstart’ is fuelled by the influence of a recent festival trip to Africa. The drive of the track is traditional West African rhythms, which all draw on Vuli’s traditional Zimbabwean heritage. The track is infectious with the combination of electronic basslines and instrumental hip-hop, however it also has this dreamy and truly unique quality as Vuli shows his talent on the sax.
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Turns out that being a multi-talented musician isn’t where Vuli’s creative talents end. He is also a talented artist. Each solo track he releases will be accompanied by a visual beat pattern. Again drawing inspiration from his African heritage, the beat patterns are a visual representation of each track featuring, symbols, shapes and colours into patterns. The patterns will be printed onto fabric and t-shirts, literally making Vuli’s music wearable.
If you want to understand more about the beat patterns, check out this video where Vuli explains it in his own words.
Words by Madeline Kilby
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