Drew Dave is Hip Hop producer from Alexandria VA/DC Metropolitan who used to go by the name of Soulful!. He resides in the crux of vintage and modern techniques. This guy is faithful to the soul that lives in his Native Instruments Maschine, but he maintains forward vision for live instrumentation and midi-synths.
His upcoming “SynthBASED” album contains live instrumentation and vocal contributions from rappers Cortez and Kenn Starr and is not just an instrumental Hip Hop album. SynthBASED is a concept album. It’s a soul, kind of jazzy, with some electronic elements, kind of album with the common denominator being that every single track utilizes a synth saw bass. The title derives from that, with the “BASED” just being a play on “bass” and Lil B’s “Based God” ideology.
This album feels like the beginning of Drew Dave really stepping outside of solely sampling. On it he plays with melodies, incorporates live instrumentation and percussion and plays out every bassline. He also does some slight stuff on the keys, and lays subtle harmonies. His good friend Drew Kid plays some additional melodies and chords throughout the album and another dope producer, Charlie Ross from Soular Heights, did the live drums on FullCircle.
This might very well be the reason why on first listen we picked out “FullCircle” and we are glad to premiere it on the site today. That super soulful Fender Rhodes combined with vocal additions clearly inspired by 2pac’s “I Get Around”. Straight banger bruh! SynthBASED is due to release February 24th on Mello Music Group, so in case you like what you hear here’s the iTunes pre-order link.
