Adrian Younge
is the next generation of soul music. A self-taught musician and recording engineer who has dedicated his life to the study of classic soul music, Younge finds himself at the center of a new soul renaissance with a vision for pushing the boundaries of the music itself.

The story begins in 1998 as the budding hip-hop producer found himself confined by the limitations of the MPC. He began teaching himself how to play various instruments so he could fully realize his vision. First it was keyboards, then drums, sax, guitar, and bass. Fascinated with the sounds of Italian soundtracks by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Younge begins work on the soundtrack to the fictional film Venice Dawn, recording the album intermittently over the course of the next year. What developed was a sound that is equal parts Morricone and Air. Self-released in 2000, the moody, synth-drenched album was entirely composed, arranged, played, and recorded by Younge.

Eight years later in 2008, Younge would find himself at the center of the Black Dynamite zeitgeist. Instrumental in the film’s development, Younge not only edited the film, but also composed the original score, which was hailed as a modern blaxploitation masterpiece for authentically capturing the cinematic soul of the 1970s, from Isaac Hayes to Curtis Mayfield. The album was released by Wax Poetics Records. Adrian Younge solidified himself as a force to be reckoned with and soon went to work writing music for the forthcoming Black Dynamite cartoon series on Adult Swim.

His next solo project, Something About April on Wax Poetics Records, Younge envisioned a new sound that would revisit his earlier, more baroque instrumental work of Venice Dawn and mesh it with the deep, gritty soul of Black Dynamite, eventually deciding to bring everything full circle by releasing the material under the moniker Venice Dawn. It is a heavy, dark mix of psychedelic soul and cinematic instrumentals with hip-hop aesthetics, touching on influences from Morricone to King Crimson, Portishead to the Flamingos, Wu-Tang to Otis Redding. Two songs—”Sirens” and ”Reverie”—were sampled by Timbaland for Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, respectively on the lead single “Picasso Baby” and “Heaven,” which features Justin Timberlake.

In spring of 2013, Younge released Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics (Wax Poetics Records), cowritten with William Hart, founding singer of the legendary soul group; as well as Adrian Younge Presents Twelve Reasons to Die, a concept album with Ghostface Killah on RZA’s new imprint, Soul Temple. He and his band, Venice Dawn, toured to support the Ghostface album.

Younge has recently completed Souls of Mischief’s There Is Only Now, and is currently working on follow ups to Ghostface Killah’s Twelve Reasons To Die and Venice Dawn’s Something About April. A new project with A Tribe Called Quest alumni Ali Shaheed Muhammed, The Midnight Hour: One Night in Harlem, 1971 sees the duo creating music that ATCQ would have sampled had these records existed decades ago. “I’m a modern soul artist who, as a hip-hop head, is always making music he hopes will get sampled,” Younge adds. New collaborations with Bilal, Raphael Saadiq, Common, No ID, and DJ Premier are also in the works for future release.

With Lyor Cohen coming on in a management position and having recently inked a deal with Sony/ATV Publishing, Younge is poised for the big leagues. Both parties have been instrumental in forging relationships with today’s top artists with the sole goal of making good music, confident his sound is the next big thing.

“I aspire to be the modern day Quincy Jones. I consider myself a composer, not a beatmaker. Beatmakers make ten beats in a day, I try to make one good beat every two or three days,” Younge acknowledges.

A love child of the Wax Poetics aesthetic, Adrian Younge’s time has come. (Andre Torres)

Ali Shaheed Muhammad
was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At an early age Ali became fascinated with music. His earliest memory of this fascination was toting around a yellow Mickey Mouse transistor radio he received as a gift. “I brought that with me everywhere; I was comforted by the sounds that came from that little box,” he says. Other memories lead to house parties his mother would throw where his Uncle Mike would deejay. It was at one of these parties that the then eight-year-old Ali took control of the mixer and turntables and began his life long musical journey. Ali went from local neighborhood deejay to a world-renowned producer and musician, forming not one but two popular bands.

The first group, A Tribe Called Quest, was where “Mr. Muhammad” partnered up with band mates Q-Tip and Phife. The hip-hop trio recorded five albums. The three stand incontestable as hip-hop classics. Their innovation changed the sound of hip-hop and R & B with jazzy, melodic beats. Tribe exited the world via the same stage as The Beatles and The Police, but their influence still lives with artists like D’Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, The Roots and Musiq.

After Tribe, Ali co-founded a new super trio named Lucy Pearl. Here with band members Dawn Robinson and Raphael Saadiq, he was able to explore more of his music abilities. Lucy Pearl fused funk, rock, R & B and hip-hop bringing a new energy and sound which remains to be duplicated.