08.21.2020
Album: My Favorite Color – Velma
The L.A.-via-Pittsburgh Artist Paints a Vivid Picture of His Life as an Aspiring Rap Star and Shares the Racing-Inspired Video for Album Highlight “Dale”
Critical Praise:
“His music is powerful. Each bar drips with the confusion and existential dread of a man who feels out of place in his world.” – Noisey
The Album + Video:
A devoted student of hip-hop with an expressive pen, My Favorite Color toes the line between tradition and experimentation in his deeply personal rhymes. Opening up his soul with a unique artistic statement, My Favorite Color shares Velma, his debut album. A tour through the Rostrum Records signee’s inventive mind and finely-tuned aesthetic, Velma is a revealing and relatable album–listening feels like catching up with an old friend about his life. The project creates a collection of the richly-drawn characters that populate life of the rapper born Anthony Willis, and by the end of the album, the listener gets intimately familiar with not just Willis, but his girlfriend, his parents, and other friends and family. The instrumentals take inspiration from neo-soul, lo-fi hip-hop, and alternative rock, as My Favorite Color tells stories from his life as a rising artist and growing person. On songs like the recent single “Funeral,” My Favorite Color contemplates complex questions about faith, mortality, music, and love. Following up his 2018 EP Go!, Velma is available everywhere via Rostrum Records.
Along with the album, My Favorite Color shares the video for “Dale,” an album highlight and his most recent single. A frenetic single that mixes fast-moving flexes with true-to-life details, “Dale” demonstrates My Favorite Color’s facility with narrative and knack for weaving in personal details about himself and his family. The new video mixes vintage footage of car racing with images of My Favorite Color rapping on top of a red whip and in front of a checkered flag. Showcasing My Favorite Color’s winsome charm and self-deprecating sense of humor (“What type of f*cking name is My Favorite Color??” says the rapper during a mid-video sketch), “Dale” is the 23-year-old artist’s second high-concept video of the year, following last month’s poignant video for “Funeral.“
Born in California, My Favorite Color spent much of his youth in Pittsburgh, starting his rap career in a diverse Pittsburgh rap scene. Living with a single mom who filled his house with the sounds of neosoul, R&B, and hip-hop, My Favorite Color started his deep dive into rap music in high school, starting with the classics, but eventually falling in love with the genre’s left field, particularly rappers like Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, Isaiah Rashad, and MF DOOM. In 2018, the rhymer shared his debut EP Go!, with appearances from Pet Zebra and Benji., earning the respect of his artistic peers in the Pittsburgh scene, leading to a prominent feature in a Noisey-published overview of the city’s rap scene in 2019.
Now living in L.A. and signed to Rostrum Records, the label that broke Pittsburgh legends like Mac Miller and Wiz Khalifa, My Favorite Color emerges as an artist to watch with Velma, a perfect record for the dog days of summer.
Buy/Stream Velma: https://smarturl.it/MyFavColorVelma
Watch “Dale”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7XRcJKkX8
Please contact Michelle or Andrea if interested in talking with My Favorite Color.
Links:
instagram | twitter | youtube | spotify
Velma: https://smarturl.it/MyFavColorVelma
“Dale”: https://smarturl.it/MyFavColorDale
“Funeral”: https://smarturl.it/MyFavColorFuneral / https://youtu.be/DsTMpiv9WWg
Go: https://open.spotify.com/album/4lecD6MBZj8LC4QG3Dg7w2?si=J1RmkzfNT0y71uH0OV9Tbg