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Blackalicious To Re-Release “Melodica” EP, Including Bonus Song On July 31

Sacramento, California Hip Hop duo Blackalicious has announced plans to re-release their early ’90s EP, Melodica. The 1994 Solesides Records seven-track release (reportedly first sold a year prior on limited edition cassette tape) was long considered a Rap rarity, with copies selling for over $100 at retailers. HipHopDX has learned that on July 31, Black Mines Records will re-release the project made by Gift Of Gab and Chief Xcel.

“Peace and greetings to all. This is The Gift of Gab – one half of Blackalicious, one fifth of the original Quannum Collective. I’m here to publicly address my health to all my fans. About seven weeks ago I went into kidney failure. I hadn’t eaten in days, checked in to a hospital, and was diagnosed. I started dialysis five weeks ago. If I can leave you with a message to take away from this, it’s to take care of yourself and do not take your health for granted. We think we’re invincible but we’re all human and our actions catch up to us.

The upside to this is I have a donor that has stepped up for which I am very grateful. Also I’ve had the phenomenal support of family and friends without whom I don’t know where my mind would be. I consider myself to be an extremely blessed person with a lot to be thankful for. There’s still a lot of appointments to be made and work to be done. There are still a lot of factors to be dealt with, but the dialysis center has given me the go ahead to do one off shows.

My new album, entitled The Next Logical Progression, will be released March 27th on Quannum Projects. It’s some of my best work if I do say so myself. In addition to my own album, Blackalicious is working on our next full length album. So today, life is good. I wanna thank all my fans for all your support, and trust me when I say ‘the best is still yet to come.’”

The Gift of Gab

NPR reviews the upcoming album and provides full streaming the album one week early! Click HERE.

“Half of the songs on The Next Logical Progression, the third solo album by one half of late-’90s rap duo Blackalicious, could be called into service as end credit music. Especially for a movie in which unlikely friendships are made and a Super Soaker battle is pivotal. The audience would take kindly to the lesson it had been taught, watch the outtakes reel for longer than usual and walk out of the theater with more emotions in its collective heart than it was expecting…” read more…

The new single “Protocol ft. Samantha Kravitz” is receiving great reviews! And more recently the REMIX ‘Wack But Good People (Wavves + Kynan Williams Remix)’ was featured on Rollingstone.com !

“Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab is set to release the aptly titled album Next Logical Progression on the Bay Area’s Quannum Projects later this month. The talented wordsmith’s “Wack But Good People” has been remixed by Wavves and Kynan Williams, younger brother of Wavves frontman Nathan Williams. “I used to listen to [Blackalicious'] Blazing Arrow on repeat with my friends in high school,” says Williams, “so working with Gab is kind of full circle for me.”

“Wack But Good People,” says Gab, is “a song about a homie trying to get on, but he kinda needs a little more work first. It’s all in good fun and humor. Remix is bananas.” Check it out for yourself: Next Logical Progression comes out March 27th, but you can download the “Wack But Good People” remix.”