Today, acclaimed Hip Hop artist and community leader�Brother Ali�delivers a brand-new song and animated short for��Ottomans.��This first look and listen serves as an introduction to�Love & Service, an animated film and full-length analog album, the newest chapter in Brother Ali’s litany of statement pieces.
The 13 songs and 40-minute film play like a multimedia primer on healing and wholeness, spirituality and community. The gritty yet lavish soundscape provided by unJUST (of the mighty Hieroglyphics crew) is a collage of educational children�s films from the 70�s and 80�s chopped and flipped in the classic ASR-10 sampler. The warm, unquantized sound is a perfect bed for Ali�s dense and poignant musings on God, death, empire, and beauty.
This music marks a new sonic territory for Brother Ali, but just as important to the project is the visual identity created by unJUST. A life-long fan of hand-drawn illustration and cartoons, he created a dynamic animated canvas for visual storytelling to accompany the concepts Ali has written about. In Love & Service, each song features a unique visual style meant to harken back to the days of pen scribblings and charcoal drawings. These are not the slick, hyper-realistic computer graphics that define most modern animation. This is textured, choppy art with fingerprints and smudges.
Brother Ali: �Nothing fuels creativity like new perspective. The opportunity to step outside my comfort zone has changed me forever, and music is pouring out of me like never before.�
Brother Ali left Minneapolis in 2020 in the midst of a fiery uprising, global pandemic, and music industry shut down, taking his family to live in Istanbul T�rkiye. Straddling two continents, this city has been the perfect home for Ali as he forges a new understanding of his purpose, relationships, and self. Now he returns with a new project to share what’s on his mind and his heart.