Sam E Hues’s 2017 album, Ghost I Remember Loving, is the kind of effort that’ll have you seeing colors, but if you’re a little seeing-impaired, then the titles from Ghost spell it out for you. Whether it’s “Red Lipstick Stain,” “Indigo Nights” or “Pastel Orange Skies,” Hues is painting a picture with his ultra-smooth, Southern brand of soulful hip-hop that's reminiscent of Big K.R.I.T, Toro y Moi and even Anderson.Paak.
The 29-year-old artist has been writing rhymes for as long as he can remember and was introduced to some of his favorite hip-hop artists and soul singers by his mom and brother. He would rap in middle school talent shows before joining a group that enjoyed mild success in high school. That collective quit at its peak, which led Hues’s second love of visual art to take over. He went on to create and co-found a pair of art collectives — Dope Dope and He(Art) — before his love for music and art finally engendered his creating a hybrid of the two.
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“The love for the culture kept me in the scene doing what I could to help further the community,” Hues said of his inability to detach from the Bay area’s creative culture. Hip-hop and pop fans are better off for it, too. Hues recently opened for Los Angeles pop outfit TV Girl and was a hip-hop highlight at the last Gasparilla Music Festival.
Ghost finds his mother’s parental advice making its way to several of the album’s interludes (hilariously on “White Noise,” where she explains that even a “Burger King always wraps his Whopper”), and Hues gets a lot of help from Alyssa Conte, who contributes vocals to a majority of the album. Conte will return to Ghost’s follow up, which Hues has been excitedly working on for the last year. Jordan Patrick — half of Bay area production duo Trapfone — is working on the record with Hues, and Maxx Forman sits in the engineer’s chair for the album. Dallas Eubanks — instrumentalist for CL favorites The Jackettes and FayRoy — is arranging the guitar.
“I can’t help but feel the possibilities are endless with the amazing team I have around me,” Hues told CL. “In my heart I feel this one is something special. I can’t wait to give it to the world.” Follow Sam E Hues on Instragram (@sam3hues).
