Before Drake and Future blew up the internet over the weekend, it was already reeking of gasoline, courtesy of James Ferraro, whose forthcoming new album Skid Row was momentarily leaked via stream late last month. The stream didn’t last long, but those of us who were privy to its grit were in heaven. Or maybe it was Hell. In any case, Ferraro has finally made a proper announcement today. The new studio album, which comes on the heels of his recently-released WAR EP, is out November 13 on Break World Records.
Check out the title track, via Thump:
Like with WAR, Ferraro has prepared a statement about Skid Row, which you can read here:
Million dollar smiles, lattes & police brutality.
Excess and fiscal ambiguity.
Media violence & Lamborghini dreams, all under one surveillance video texture.The desert landscape, like tupperware housing digital smog.
K9’s and glistening acid rain,
wash away the sentient blood that stains the palm tree city.
An Escalade® burns on the freeway.
The drone of helicopters hum above head, in a desert backdrop commuters in traffic requite a speed of 20 mph pass the gleaming semiotic debris.
the sushi elite & the poor all anonymous in an unforgiving freeway fatality,
an undiscerning system.Man on the highway, through a walkie talkie speaker, barefoot on the slick asphalt.
As the sunsets, the sky burns a fusion of metal and silhouetted palms.
and a hyper real civilization is rendered by it’s idealism, at war with the gravity of reality..
Rendered by it’s traffic culture, it’s culture of police brutality and gang violence, media saturation and racism, it’s glamorization and solipsism, rendered by the tabloid of it self.” Skid Row started as a collection of poems, it came first as words, then grew into becoming the lyrics of Skid Row.. I was writing about the state of the world around me, living on what feels like the brink of societal collapse while also seeing high excess everywhere.. all the sounds of the streets crept in, the blood and tears on the street, the echoing sirens in the early morning fog, soaked into the poetry and it became evident that LA is a hyper America. a place where violence (media and real life), excess and poverty, police exceptionalism & brutality, racism interact daily.. racism is a war on reason, so in my state of animosity I wrote Skid Row, I’m a disciple of the streets my spoken word and music on Skid Row mirror these conflicts that spill out over the western landscape like a painting of America frozen in a state of hyper real war ”
Skid Row tracklist:
01. Burning Prius (For The World)
02. White Bronco
03. Pollution
04. Street Freak
05. Million Dollar Man
06. Thrash & Escalate
07. Skid Row
08. To Live And Die In L.A.
09. Rhinestones
10. Doctor Hollywood
11. 1992
12. Sentinel Beast
13. At The Beach
• James Ferraro: https://soundcloud.com/b-e-b-e-t-u-n-e
More about: James Ferraro
