Fresh off Spotify’s ‘New Music Friday’ tastemaking playlist and a top 3 career streaming day for runaway love story “What U Want”, today Bay Area hip hop artist Caleborate taps buzzing Brooklyn rapper Kota the Friend (recently on Biden & Harris’ Inauguration Playlist) for “Contact” — a mellow, lyrically powered banger over stripped guitar & a boom bap beat. The single is from Caleborate’s upcoming album Light Hit My Skin, out March 26 via TBKTR / AWAL – featuring just-announced collaborations with Duckwrth, Deante’ Hitchcock, redveil and more (full tracklist below). Following December’s jazzy rap anthem “We Make” (feat. Samaria), Caleborate explains the new track: “Kota and I link up for the first time over this beautiful beat, sharing our own real, introspective stories of pursuit, confrontation, struggle. ‘Contact’ is two MCs from different coasts giving a peek into the worlds and minds of young strivers.”

On Light Hit My Skin, Caleborate’s sound matures into a sonically diverse, juxtaposed narrative of light and dark in his first full length album since 2017’s Real Person. Stepping off a well-tread hip-hop path into the full range of the LP’s styles — borrowing from 1990s alternative to classic 2000s rap to electro-pop and beyond — Caleborate remains locked in alongside collaborators including some of the most exciting contemporary lyricists and genre-bending artists.
 
About his forthcoming LP, Caleborate says, “This album is about feeling feelings that I haven’t been allowed to before, emotions that black men aren’t usually allowed to feel at the same time. It’s about pursuit, within the context of this sort of new American dream, being aware of how fragile the world is. It’s about how life can be this extremely grounding, halting experience, or fill you with air and make you feel weightless and free as you glide through the days.”
 
Caleborate first sprang onto the national scene with 2015’s Hella Good and quickly expanded his footprint with 1993 (2016) and Real Person (2017). The 27-year-old’s kaleidoscoping mosaics of love and heartbreak, weed smoke and college loans, family ties and simmering ambitions, triumph and loss have earned praise from the likes of many, plus collabs with Big K.R.I.T., Pell, Larry June, Innanet James and more. With over 75 million streams — including coveted playlists from Spotify’s ‘Most Necessary’ to Apple Music’s ‘BARS’ — he also saw “Caught Up” featured in the recent Shaft movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and “Only 4 Tha Real” on the FIFA ’21 soundtrack. His reputation as a not-to-be-missed live act is evident on the recent COLORS performance of “Clicquot Shower” and slots at Rolling Loud and Outside Lands.