Stream // Black Milk: Perfected On Puritan Ave.

This goes sick around two minutes in on a jazz tip. Detroit sounds.

Here’s some press blurb. The new LP drops in October.

Today Pitchfork premiered a new track from Detroit, Michigan, producer and rapper Black Milk, titled“Perfected On Puritan Ave.” The single is from Black Milk’s upcoming album No Poison No Paradise, due out October 15th via Fat Beats/Computer Ugly. Pitchfork has also revealed the album artwork, designed by Dallas, Texas, artist Joonbug.

Known for his progressive and boundary-pushing style, No Poison No Paradise promises to expand on Black Milk’s talents and push his work to another level. While 2010’s Album of the Year was an album of dense and heavily layered sounds, the new record will have a more “stripped-down” approach, relying on sample driven beats, nimble lyricism and a more laid-back vibe. This album also marked a change in process for Black Milk, who worked on much of the material solo. “Recording outside of Detroit for the first time put me in a place without instant access to a lot of the musicians, engineers, emcees and singers that I usually collaborate with,” he recalls, “Just me in a room with my equipment and my thoughts.” The isolation allowed him to delve even deeper creatively, removing all distraction and forcing him to focus on what direction he wished to take his work.

“I wanted to focus more on storytelling and having a collection of songs with subject matters that tie into one another,” says Black Milk, revealing that No Poison No Paradise is also structured conceptually. The album functions as a collection of dreams inside the head of Sonny Jr., a character Black Milk has created. In “Perfected On Puritan Ave.,” for example, Sonny flashes back to a time when he and his childhood friend are playing basketball and aspiring to be NBA players or rap artists. The song later flashes forward to see Sonny living some of his childhood dreams.

Subject matter in the album’s other tracks flows from scenarios like this one to the experiences of some of Sonny’s peers as well, weaving and bobbing in a non-linear narrative. “Just like a dream, the scenes are always changing and sometimes feel random and inconsistent,” Black Milk explains. “It’s a mixture. Some songs and stories are told from Sonny’s older self, some from his younger days, and some from a third person perspective.” Though not specifically a first person account of his own life, autobiographical themes abound on No Poison No Paradise, as Black Milk explores both the struggle of growing up in a working-class Detroit neighborhood as well as the internal conflicts of maintaining inspiration and integrity as a musician, making the album a poignant glimpse into the mind of a visionary artist.