Tear It Off feat. Fly Anakin
Kumail

Kumail, an R&B/Soul producer, composer and vocalist from Mumbai, India, now based in Lisbon, links up with American rapper Fly Anakin on Tear It Off and announces his sophomore album Mudbrown.

Following the release of Darlin’, Tear It Off is about taking off your mask and revealing your authentic self, “that’s when you’re most powerful and most beautiful.” It’s also about people who act like allies but are really predators. Fly Anakin took that idea and flipped it in his own way.

Mudbrown refers to the river in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where Kumail lived for five years, “that mud brown water the people say never leaves you, once you taste it. It’s about paying respect to a place that’s always gonna be a part of me, even if it gave me just as many scars as it did blessings.”

Blending his love of R&B, soul, funk, bossa nova and heavy African influences from his time in Kinshasa, Kumail flipped this into something raw and new, as he explains, “It’s not clean or perfect, it’s real. Some tracks are heavy, some are love songs, some are angry, but it’s honest.”

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Fly Anakin has previously collaborated with the likes of Freddie Gibbs, Nickelus F, Evidence, Ohbliv, Redveil, MAVI and is co-founder of the Richmond rap collective Mutant Academy.

Heavily influenced by D’Angelo, Kumail also cites Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, J Dilla, Erykah Badu and Aretha Franklin, as musical inspirations. “The list is long, but it all comes back to that old school soul energy.”