FATBOI SHARIF & STEEL TIPPED DOVE ANNOUNCE DECAY

There is nothing quite like announcement day when you run a record label. Primarily because up until then, you and the artists have been working on this project, listening to this project, talking about this project, and now you finally start to let everyone else in on the secret. Release day is great, don’t get us wrong, but that’s like the day the baby is born. Album announcements are more like when you let everyone know that you are going to have a child. Suddenly, this thing that you have been obsessing over becomes a little bit more real.

On that note, Backwoodz Studioz is thrilled to announce the impending release of Decay, the new album from Fatboi Sharif and Steel Tipped Dove. Instead of a registry, we would like to direct you to the album pre-orders where you can secure a copies of the limited edition vinyl, while they last. And trust us, they grow up very fast and go away to Discogs before you know it. All jokes aside, as much great work as Sharif (Gandhi Loves Children, Preaching in Havana) and Dove (Call Me When You’re Outside, All the Weight Feathers Don’t Have) have released recently, Decay feels like they’ve collectively leveled up.

Fatboi Sharif & Steel Tipped Dove
DECAY

Coming Out July 21, Vinyl Now Available for Pre-Order

Album cover for Decay. Photo by Tim Fish

PRE-ORDER: DECAY VINYL

Decay, the new album from New Jersey rapper Fatboi Sharif and producer Steel Tipped Dove, is an anomaly. In an era of microwave projects and email collaborations, the duo spent more than a year writing, recording and mixing Decaytogether in Dove’s Brooklyn studio. At a moment when many independent hip-hop projects are sonically predictable, easily categorized, and derivative, Decay is unapologetically experimental. Love it or hate it, it doesn’t sound like any other record out. Add to all that the fact that, bucking the trend of feature-laden rap records, there isn’t a single guest appearance on Decay. This album is a one-of-one, handcrafted from the ground up by two of the genre’s most esoteric artists, under the umbrella of indie rap’s preeminent record label. 

In October 2020 Dove got in touch with Sharif after hearing Gandhi Loves Children, Sharif’s project with Roper Williams...“I really liked the experimental writing he was doing. The whole vibe was different from the beat choices, the visuals, the lyrics — all unique,” Dove explains. The two of them linked up and hit it off immediately.

“In the first session we had made two songs that ended up being some of the best work on the album,” Sharif says, “and as we worked on it we knew we had something special that we weren't hearing anywhere else and we kept building on that”

Sharif found himself digging deeply in order to write, which he credits to Dove’s attention to detail and ability to push the boundaries sonically. “Dove’s production kept me in the zone to touch on stories that I never touched on in my past work, from personal situations tucked away that I thought I wasn't ready to unveil yet, to convos we just would have regarding the state of everything going on in the world and beyond”

For his part, Dove was  consistently impressed by the young artists’ dedication, as well as his ear for the unusual. “It was almost like a challenge to him, if I had a beat that no one had chosen, or that had kinda strange timing, he would almost always choose that one”

This is Koyaanisqatsi via Rahway, New Jersey. A winding nighttime drive along the narrow, rutted paths of a damaged psyche, dead deer watching from the roadside. Decay is a candlelit spades game in the parlor of a dilapidated mansion, eviction papers pasted atop one another on the front door. A black Woodstock in the wetlands, blotter acid in the headband, as ELUCID might say. Together, Sharif and Dove just flipped on the power to a carousel in the middle of an abandoned amusement park, and every horse has a rider, spinning and spinning in the dark

“Sometimes in life, we feel held down, tested and sought after by an unseen force that we can’t fully explain,” Sharif muses, “this album is a trip into the foundation of the dysfunction that surrounds us all in one way or another”

 

Steel Tipped Dove and Fatboi Sharif
📸: George Douglas Peterson

 

TRACKLISTING

1. Phantasm

2. East Hollywood 

3. Designer Drugs

4. Brandon Lee

5. Dimethyltryptamine

6. Ash Wednesday

7. (Interlude)

8. Prisoner Of Jesus

9. Think Pieces

10. Kingdom

11. Measuring Spoon Techniques

12. Green Winged Shoulder Padding

13. The Christening 

14. The 6th Floor

15. Scarhead

16. Boogie Monster

17. The Farewell Outfit

all songs performed by Fatboi Sharif
all songs produced, engineered & mixed by steel tipped dove
except for: 
"green winged shoulder padding" prod. by: steel tipped dove & Adibop
cover photo by: Tim Fish
mastered by: Willie Green

DECAY vinyl is a pre-order
but is already pressed, in hand & ready to ship on street date!
PRE-ORDER: DECAY VINYL
PRE-ORDER: DECAY on STREAMING / DOWNLOAD

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