Brice Blanco snapshots the state of modern Afrofuturism in lead single "B Here"

Afrofuturism as a set of ideals conveyed into music – the trapezoidal optimism of Funkadelic, the open-palmed mystic contemplations of Sun Ra – has been around for a while. Long enough, anyhow, that the original horizons envisioned by its founding visionaries have long since risen. As of recently, many artists who seemingly live to create on the outer moors of popular consciousness - such as L.A.-based Brice Blanco - are decidedly having a lot of fun paying homage to and pushing their lineage forward.

“I’m a project kind of guy. I like to create a world and a space to live in,” Blanco tells me. When listening to standout track “B Here” on AFRO URF, arriving via Future Gods on September 28th, that creative organizing principle is immediately audible. With its modern L.A. chamber-funk controlled chaos and livewire Afrofuturistic hum, listening to “B Here” feels a bit like being trapped in the humid greenhouse and forgetting, just for three minutes and thirty-five seconds, about your worsening body odour.

“I think I was just proud of how organic ‘B Here’ was. It really does represent where my main producer, Dav and I, are trying to go; so to actually execute it was really exciting, and it wasn’t forced. That’s when you really know, right?” he beams. Very much in step with his predecessors, Blanco sees Afrofuturism as a state of mind: by staying abuzz with the spirit outside of work hours and leveraging the studio more so as a refining space. He enthused over unlocking a newfound sense of synchronicity between his stylistic pliability and increasingly ruthless editorial instincts.

“I work directly with a few producers, but I would say Dav is the executive producer of this project”, he continues. “We’ve been working together since about 2021 or 2022; that’s when I would say I started planning to try to carve a sound of my own. We definitely have a vision of where we want to go, and our individual set of influences that we have learned to fit together. It’s like a gridlock.”

While the release marks his first official collaboration with a label, Blanco has been creating music since a near-fatal cardiovascular attack at the age of seventeen. The health tribulations of his past are “no longer the most prescient thing” on his mind, but remain a meaningful reminder of why he continues to process his life through music. “I moved to L.A. back in 2018, so it’s been a while. Houston is massive, so it’s kind of harder to coagulate, if you will. I think about myself before I moved out here, and while I had like some skill set, it was so raw in comparison to what it is now. It’s night and day,” he elaborates. “I will say, I came from a line of thought where I was at one point trying to be the best rapper of all time. I started off as a rapper’s rapper. That in itself leaves a little bit of the lingering feeling of, ‘Was that verse hard enough?’”

Despite his past preferences for making rap music, Blanco sees his projected growth trajectory as continuing to orient toward melodic rhapsody, stabilizing his singing voice, and, ultimately, “finding the right balance between being palatable and very raw.” Blanco continues, "That’s kind of my thinking these days. Life moves very fast here, so you kind of have to learn how to compartmentalize and figure it out. It really sharpens the sword. You have no choice but to get stronger.”

While not from ill intent, certain sounds associated with lineage often twinkle most brightly in the ears of the purists and preservationists. Therefore, he anticipated that his music may be approached with a set of expectations. In true Afrofuturistic spirit, Blanco doesn’t care. With AFRO URF, he sought to tap influences directly from his lineage without melting into stereotypes. “I wanted to do something that had a title that was so weighted with AFRO URF, but where the music didn’t necessarily represent that,” he elaborates. “So you may be expecting certain things from it and I might not be giving that to you. That is intentional. That was a big piece of the thinking behind the title.”

If anything, his withholding exposes a larger pattern: he’s most interested in seeing recurring studies on authenticity and risk-taking through to full manifestation. “In its prime time, Afrofuturism really influenced the forefathers of funk and hip hop: it represented the ability to take those chances as black artists. And that’s like – wow – y’all were really just doing stuff, but they were the foundation of real jazz. Artists like Sun Ra went out on a limb and said, 'We believe in doing this.' That level of vibration is always what I am trying to reach.”