Nearly a decade ago, when an emerging Matisyahu was the frequent subject of conversations and magazine articles crowning him the king of Hasidic Jewish reggae, it would have been difficult for him to conduct an interview on the streets of Brooklyn without attracting some passing gawkers. Talking to Billboard nearly two years after shaving his traditional beard and sidelocks, clad in sweatpants and a tattered V-neck T-shirt, the artist born Matthew Miller can conduct business while remaining highly incognito. Appearances and media hype aside, he’s been living the artist life like no other, writing on spiritual excursions to the Ukraine and singing on topics of faith and tradition, while working with producers from the secular pop world.
Matisyahu is currently working on his fifth studio album, a so-far untitled effort he hopes to release in early 2014, though a label deal isn’t yet in place. In the studio, he shared with Billboard a handful of songs — from a batch of roughly 20 new cuts — that he may include. While it’s too early to tell what will make the final track list, he seems particularly proud of these hand-picked selections, so far unheard by anyone outside his camp. “With this record we just stripped everything back,” Matisyahu says. “We’re trying to get to the core of what the song is and not fill it in so that each item-each instrument — makes its move, and it’s an important move.”
There’s the entrancing “Surrender,” a minimal cut built around a pulsating electro line, and “Vow of Silence,” a dark, visceral song whose influence is decidedly more hip-hop than reggae. Where Matisyahu’s last studio effort, 2012’s “Spark Seeker,” was jubilant and extroverted, this new collection sounds cautionary and intimate. On “Spark Seeker,” Matisyahu worked with Kool Kojak, a crowd-pleasing producer best-known for working with artists like Ke$ha and Flo Rida. Now, he’s working with producer Stu Brooks and engineer/co-producer Joel Hamilton, both hardly known outside of his own camp. The lyrics echo humble, devotional themes, suggesting Matisyahu, who doesn’t label himself religiously, may have gone more secular in appearance, but is still using his faith as a frequent drawing point of inspiration for his music.
“Light, a record I did with [producer] David Kahne, had a song called ‘Smash Lies’ similar to this style a little bit,” the vocalist says. “So, there’s definitely an edge to it…Then there are other songs that are much more sensitive.”
The earliest origins of the new studio album date prior to the release of “Spark Seeker,” to a project called “Akedah: Teaching to Love,” that he began while studying the origins of the Hasidic faith with his teacher, Ephraim Rosenstein. “We went together to the grave of this man that was the Baal Shem Tov, the Ukrainian mystic in the late 1700s who started the Hasidic movement…And we started studying the mysticism around his teachings and then we began to write.”
A song or two from those sessions might appear on the new album, though it was a track crafted with Brooks called “Hard Way” that served as the next springboard.
“I sat down with Stu and I wrote and recorded some vocals in maybe an hour or an hour-and-a-half, and had this song, which is completely different from anything I’ve ever done. It’s more personal, but kicks ass also. It’s sensitive, but strong. There’s a lot more space…It has kind of a fresh kind of feel to it, but organic, but also digital.”
While few plans are laid yet for the album rollout, Matisyahu will embark on his annual Festival of Light Hanukkah tour, beginning in Chicago on Nov. 30 and ending in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 9.
“I continue to listen. That’s one thing that’s led to a lot of development,” Matisyahu says, reminiscing on his years in the industry. “The better a listener you become, the better your music becomes.”