Houston’s pre-eminent hip hop duo, Blaze X Black, has never lacked confidence. They know they’re good. They’ve been honored with their own day (August 4) by the City of Houston, are Houston Press Music Awards winners and have hordes of fans following their music, which they’ve been creating for more than a decade.
So, it’s not exactly surprising to hear Rick Blaze and Bishop Black singing high praises for their new album, NAHIMSAYIN, which releases to listeners everywhere May 27. But over the course of a half-hour phone interview with them, it’s clear this isn’t the routine rap boast. After years of putting the album’s 20 tracks together, reaching out to talent abroad to add to its flavor, giving fans samples of the music at listening events and tweaking the songs to their final form, they believe they’ve created something for the ages.
“A lot of things that we’ve done were done intentionally and with purpose,” said Blaze. “We just hope everybody listens to it and gives it a chance. I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised. When you start talking about the best in the city, talking about albums and artistry, our names, after this album, should be in the conversation.”
Blaze X Black have been favorites for a while, tapped to play important civic events like Super Bowl festivities and hosting their own residency at House of Blues Houston. But despite all that traction, Blaze admitted NAHIMSAYIN almost never happened.
“The turning point was COVID, 2020, 2021. The world shut down and we were shooting a weekly video and my laptop got damaged and I ended up losing everything on it,” said Blaze. He said that threw him for a loop and dampened his will to create music, his lifelong passion.
“But, as 2020 rolled on and 2021 came on, I slowly started getting the desire to make music,” he said. “A lot of what you hear today, the origin of that started in that time frame. It’s been updated and changed since then, but the origin of the music happened around that time frame.”
Blaze said from its earnest start to its final form, it took about two years to complete the album.
“The finish is that this is album of the year by far,” said Black. “We had an active listening install for some of our fans and hearing it all put together for the first time, from the intro to the skits and everything, you know, just enjoying the moment, just celebrating with people that believe in you, that’s the biggest thing. This album is bigger than us. Just finally being able to say, you know what, we have it to where we want it to be and now it’s ready for the world to hear.
“You’re gonna have to tell us to our face that this is not jamming,” Black said.
There are nods to Houston on NAHIMSAYIN, like the track “Timmy Chan,” but it’s not too Houston-centric. Blaze wanted the look of the album to reflect something universal, just like its sound, so he took a leap of faith and asked a renowned international artist to design its cover art.
“Ricardo Cavolo is an artist, a painter, and he’s worked with a lot of big brands, I mean, from Gucci to T-Mobile to Chiquita Banana to Starbucks – I could go on and on – and I’m a big fan of his work. I’ve been a big fan of his work. He did a shoe that he came out with a few years ago, he did a collaboration with Bally, and I was able to purchase that shoe and that’s kind of when I first fell in love with his art. I’m just a really big fan of his.
“I figured the thought of having him do our album cover, what I wanted, I thought was a far-fetched idea that probably wouldn’t come to fruition, right?” he said. “God is good, I’ll just say that. The email that I sent probably should not have elicited a response from him. It was kind of like a, ‘Hey, I’m a fan, I would like to work with you but I know you probably won’t work with me’ type of thing.”
Cavolo responded, though, and asked for some of the music. Hearing it, he must have recognized the common bond they share in bringing art to the masses, albeit through different mediums and an ocean apart. They traded notes and the album cover is unmistakably Cavolo and irrefutably Blaze X Black, a bold splash of colors and evocative images that match the tenor of the album’s songs.
“We’ve got a one-of-one design from the great Ricardo Cavolo. To me, that’s a huge, huge deal. Again, I’m a big fan of art of all types. I was really, really excited, and still am, about the Ricardo Cavolo collab,” Blaze said.
Of the two, Black is more the band’s cheerleader, the hype man, the promoter. If you want the technical nuances, you ask Blaze. If you want the big picture, you ask Black.
“This project personally takes me on a journey from when I was younger and I used to ride from the north to the south side a lot, and from the south side to the north side a lot. I would remember certain songs that I would hear and hope, okay, on the way back, how many minutes we got? They play it every 30 minutes or so.
“This project is very nostalgic for me but the production on it, Rick Blaze put together a masterpiece, from the tracking to the intricate details and the beats and stuff like that, that just made my job a lot more easy. I just did what I normally do.”
Black wanted it known that “Rick Blaze produced everything. Same dude. Same fellow. Same guy.” He recently told the Houston music podcast Vinyl Voices that sometimes creates an interesting challenge for him as the band’s lyricist.
“Every time he sends me something, before I hit play, I don’t know what I’m about to hear,” Black said. “’Oh, that’s what we’re doing today? That’s how you’re feeling? Okay, cool.’ That’s usually my response. Or, I’ll text him like, ‘What the hell are you on? What do you be doing over there in your free time because you just sent me a love ballad, then you just sent me a rock track and now you sent me this, so as the writer I can’t expect anything, I literally just have to be, ‘Okay, cool, this is how I feel to this track – bam.’ Or, what story can I tell, can I find something that fits this, and it’s just always weird as shit because I never know.”
There’s an easy give and take between these two friends who’ve known one another since grade school. But Black is still surprised how his friend and co-creative can still surprise him. For instance, we note that the album opens with the track “JOEL OSTEEN” and closes with one titled “Jesus Piece.” The former is slick, smooth-talking and the latter is straight-up, gospel-drenched church. The notion is listeners may have come for fancy preaching from the pulpit but they’ll leave on a true spiritual high.
“You’re telling me something new because I didn’t even notice that until you said it just now,” Black insisted. “The album was a puzzle to me. It was a puzzle, like, okay I know where this piece should go, I know where this piece could go, and things like that, and at the end, watching how Rick put it together and ‘JOEL OSTEEN’ being like one of the last tracks that we actually did, when he named it that, I didn’t think nothing of it from the standpoint of how you said it and now it makes sense. So, it gives the album a fresh listen for me of, ‘Okay, this is why this is here, this is why that is here,’ and now I’m listening to the album on a deeper level.”
“It’s definitely a full-circle moment and again, for me, I wanted the album to be full of nuance and nostalgia. Those were the two words that I just kept playing on,” Blaze added. “I wanted something you could hear, that you felt like you’ve heard it before and felt familiar, but it was totally different.”
“When is the last time you heard something, from front to back, that you could study?” Black interjected. “This album will be studied. I’m calling it now, it will be studied. We’re taking this album install kinda on the road, like on tour, getting different creatives together, fans in other states, other cities, playing this album and having discussions like we’re having here and hearing how they interpret the album and what they heard. Like I say, I hear something new all the time.”
Black said there will be a Blaze X Black takeover of Screwed Up Records & Tapes on June 21, a show at Redemption Square on July 4 and a listening party at DAWA Studios in Austin on July 19. They’re planning something locally for August 4 and encourage folks to follow their website for more news about the album and events which spotlight it. The album is available exclusively through their website beginning May 27.
“We just want people to take some time and just sit with the body of work, the music, and just know that we took our time to craft something that we feel the city of Houston will be proud of,” Blaze said. “Our goal is to win a Grammy with this album or at least a song from the album. Our goal is Grammys. We’re shooting for the top with that.”
