At just 22 years old, Chicago rapper Alex Wiley is preparing to drop his fourth full-length record, Synthia, due out in September via Closed Sessions. But he tells Billboard it’s his “first project completely set in the present.”
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Synthia, whose first single “Feast” is premiered exclusively below, “is just completely about my life now & the way I see the world now,” says Wiley. “While Flame Emoji [his release from earlier this year] was just something separate that we just did on our own, this feels like the follow-up from Village Party [his 2014 release], he adds. “It feels like an album. Synthia has a point of view, a whole aesthetic to it. It’s new. It’s me but updated with a new perspective, new experiences.”
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Wiley’s changing the pace aesthetically as well. With a sound that’s “a lot warmer,” he says Synthia is “meant to be a smoother listen.
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“The things that make it jump off the speakers are the patterns and percussion, more so than synths and guitars and stuff I’ve used previously,” he says of the production. “It’s got a new bounce. It just has a whole new bounce to it from anything I’ve done before.”
Listen to “Feast,” produced by YOG$, below: