candid. by IVY SOLE.

Ivy Sole is a queer Pan-Africanist musician and creative theorist from Philadelphia by way Charlotte, North Carolina. A skilled polymath, the multi-hyphenate musician forges poetry into incisive lyrics, earning features in Pitchfork, Billboard, NPR, and more. Their forthcoming album CANDID is the third full length project of Ivy’s career, following mixtape Eden (2016) and debut album Overgrown (2018), as well as the East + West EPs of 2017 and last year’s SOUTHPAW, which made NPR’s Best of 2020 list.

CANDID unfolds in a triptych and begins with a question: Why these niggas so easy to kill? Mama, why you make me easy to kill? The first movement of the triptych is displayed by each song’s hook, all from the perspective of the protagonist’s parents––Call Me, Dangerous, The Ways, One More Night. The second movement is from the perspective of the protagonist–– Bamboo, Chico, What You Deserve, Talk That Talk and Nights Like This. These songs depict the highs and lows of queer relationships, shifting/transforming desires, and the pain of detachment and dissonance. The third movement encapsulates the source of the protagonist’s pain (“DARE”), one of the sources of their parents’ pain (“Reincarnate”), the album’s denouement (“Runaway”), and a love letter (“Otherside”). The album is loosely based on their parents’ love story and in it, they examine the tragedy within the nuclear family model, its politicization and performance, incarceration, and loss. The personal is political. “This album wouldn’t exist without the candid accounts of my parents about their lives leading up to having me. I also have a deep, abiding desire to be as candid with myself and with the people I love as I am in my music.”

The album began in a poetry workshop at the Pennsylvania Industrial Detention Center (PICC). The Philadelphia based organization YASP allowed the Excelano Project, the spoken word group to which Ivy belonged, to help facilitate a workshop for minors held in adult prison. While it was Ivy's first time visiting a prison, the experience unearthed an ephemeral memory, which was further affirmed after a conversation with Ivy’s mother about the incarceration of her stepfather. More than any other project to date, CANDID has deepened their commitment to abolition and the movement for African liberation. Within and beyond the frame of family, CANDID also meditates on themes of violence, longing and belonging, anxiety, and addiction. The culmination of the project has given her empathy for her family in a way she never saw coming, as well as given her a renewed disdain for the state and oppression and all its manifestations.

In addition to the 14 tracks, Ivy wrote a narrative podcast and curated a digital archive to act as companion, epilogue, and coda to the album. CANDID’s eight-episode podcast provides vignettes from the album to expand the narrative beyond the songs. The eight episodes will illustrate the real, imagined, and in between ____ of the album’s arc. The digital archive is an opportunity for listeners to witness Ivy’s community, in their own words, through images, and more. “I am one piece of an artistic community. I don’t exist without their sharpening, their contributions, their stories, their labor and their love.”

Music and writing have always been central to Ivy’s life. Ivy Sole’s work is indebted to the lasting impact of each of the artist’s close-held artistic homes: her meaningful connections to the South, gospel music, hip hop, and Philadelphia all continually inform her style. From gospel choirs to school bands to mixing CDs to middle school Prince obsessions and missing out and then catching up on Lil Wayne, music has been the mainstay, while in Ivy’s interior life books and film have an enormous impact on their creative output. Conditions permitting, Ivy plans to host a screening for their peers to celebrate the release of CANDID in addition to a more traditional release show.

Charlotte born & raised, Philly made. Welcome to the garden.

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