Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
Digital booklet and track list available to download.
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Limited Edition 12" RED V:ILLICIT Vinyl. Only 175 copies.
Base price: $25 + Shipping.
Signed copies: $35 (Change the amount when prompted for payment.) + Shipping.
If you are local to Charlottesville, and you would prefer to pick your album up and not pay any shipping charges, send your payment directly to paypal.me/aydeethegreat. I will hold the album for you at the Rap Lab at the University of Virginia, which is in New Cabell Hall, 398.
Consider donating more than the requested amount if you feel so inclined. All proceeds will go to awards to support music students from historically minoritized/marginalized backgrounds working on innovative and creative scholarship which will also be supported by the University of Virginia's Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Includes unlimited streaming of V: ILLICIT
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
“V: ILLICIT” is a mixtap/e/ssay about what it means to be dope. Dope is not only a measure of quality or coolness, it is rooted in the experiences of Black people in the U.S. since its beginnings. Those experiences include the “War On Drugs,” which was really a war on people, and its casualties and aftermath. Dopeness predates this focus on drugs and the people projected as their primary sellers, users, and abusers. It is also about permission and sanctioning.
Dope is distinct from drugs like illegal is distinct from legal and illicit is distinct from licit. Dopeness relates to the histories of people treated as property, chattel, technology—labeled legal or illegal, human or something other than.
“V: ILLICIT” is an album made in the presence and aftermath of these histories, as an attempt to do what hip-hop has done for the past half-century: to make art—beautiful, ugly, abundant, and otherwise—from the ruins of war and the carnage it leaves.
The release of “V: ILLICIT,” the fifth installment of a series of mixtap/e/ssays, coincides with A.D. Carson's promotion with tenure to Associate Professor of Hip-Hop & the Global South at the University of Virginia in 2023 and the date celebrated as the 50th anniversary of the 1973 party largely acknowledged as the birth of Hip-Hop Culture.
credits
released August 11, 2023
Beats for 079, 080, 081, 087, 088, 091 by Vintage. Beats for 082, 084, 090 by Marcus “Truth” Fitzgerald. Beats for 083, 085, 089 by Chadi. Beat for 086 by Deiontrae Lawrence.
Album recorded by A.D. Carson. Album mixed by Marcus “Truth” Fitzgerald; *083 mixed by Mike Moxham; *084 mixed by A.D. Carson.
Album mastered by Mike Moxham.
Album cover design by Angela Simone
Liner notes designed by A.D. Carson.
Album cover design by Angela Simone.
A.D. CARSON is a rapper. He is an educator and artist from Decatur, Illinois whose only aspiration as a high school student was to become a professional rapper. He writes stuff, some of which he shares on his website, AydeeTheGreat.com.