Bay Area hip hop artist Caleborate will release his hotly anticipated new album Light Hit My Skin via TBKTR / AWAL. Featuring collaborations with Duckwrth, Deante’ Hitchcock, redveil and more, the record is a genre-bending affair as Caleborate’s sharp, deft flow, gripping narratives, and charismatic, infectious energy paints a vivid portrait of life as a Northern Californian 20-something. Ahead of the album’s release, he shares a video for the recent lyrically-powered banger “Contact” featuring buzzing Brooklyn rapper Kota the Friend. As Caleb explains, the track is “two MCs from different coasts giving a peek into the worlds and minds of young strivers.” It follows the rapper’s runaway love story “What U Want” and December’s jazzy rap anthem “We Make” (feat. Samaria). Earlier this week he also unveiled an interactive website allowing fans to dive into his world & workspace as an artist — featuring never-before-seen studio takes, intimate details about the creation process, an interactive moodboard and computer desktop, access to various funny photos, videos, and documents of his everyday life. 

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 the LP, Caleb 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 several outlets, 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. 

(Photo Credit: 36Neex)