music bio
“ Hip hop’s street urgent political anthems blaring in the bus dock, at school let out, proved the sheer power of verse and sound,” says Brad. The NYC underground dance culture deepened his understanding of the range and force of Black music.”
(RE)INTRODUCING BRAD WALROND
Brad Walrond, known for his vibrant energetic demeanor, made a resounding splash when he arrived on underground spoken word and music scenes in New York City in the mid 1990s. Brad calls out the gospel sounds and voices of his childhood as his formative creative heroes. Some composite of Gospel, R&B, Friday night MTV and hip hop was always in the air. “Hip hop’s street urgent political anthems blaring in the bus dock, at school let out, proved the sheer power of verse and sound,” says Brad. The NYC underground dance and music culture deepened his understanding of the range and force of Black music.
As Brad was becoming a household name within the New York City arts scene, producer Marco Jengkens approached him to be part of the critically-acclaimed spoken word compilation album, “Eargasms: Crucial poetics: vol. 1.” Brad’s track, “Underneath the Metal,” is an ode to the treasures that spring out of black phraseology. The album featured notable peers such as Saul Williams, jessica Care moore, Tony Medina, Sara Jones, Yasiin Bey, Mike Ladd, and others. Later, Shelley Nicole, a gutsy musician, rock-funk singer and songwriter asked Brad to contribute to her “I Am American” album, which was produced by Vernon Reid. “Fallopia” dares us to make sacred practice out of listening to the heart of Black women.
Poet and spoken word artist Brad Walrond is primed to transmit his gifts merging verse and sound to the ideas of our time surrounding human consciousness, virtual futures, race, gender, sex, and desire. Both his new album Alien Day (June 2024) and upcoming book, Every Where Alien, by Moore Black Press/Amistad HarperCollins (slated to be released August 2024) explores Brad’s own discoveries of the world, mapped onto the discovery of art and resistance movements.
Alien Day
The album is a cosmic explosion of the aesthetics of black love and black epistemology,—a sonic and lexical portal toward our collective futures. AlienDay is Brad’s collaborative effort with genre defying producer & composer Howard Alper. AlienDay gives a nod to the sounds of underground hip hop in the 90s. (Think a cross between Kendrick Lamar, Digable Planets and Gangstarr.)
The music on Alien Day covers styles from “boom-bap” hip hop to glitch house and experimental ambient. The contagious first single, “Every Where Alien,” takes listeners on an origin story through martyrdom and revitalization, reinforcing the notion that black history, black art, black desires, can never and will never be annihilated. With award-winning poets Mike Ladd and jessica Care moore the track, “Open Cypher,” testifies that hip hop was always about world making and future building. The cypher makes room for the bazaar of the black imagination.
Alien Day is a much needed work of art that brilliantly witnesses the powers of metamorphosis when caught somewhere behind a colonized gaze and a world beset by pandemics and political division. Alien Day calls on the landscape and testimony of the New York City underground to signal the possibility for wholly emancipated selves tapped into the fullness of their ancestral and queer roots—even now, especially in this polarized zeitgeist. “Yemaya’s Wings” repurposes the powers of ritual to aid us in the restructure of the future of Black life.
Poetry and music are Brad’s alchemy. It’s difficult not to think of artists like Sun Ra or Octavia Butler when vibing with this album. The musical content was developed with full artistic intentions following pathways and portals where the outcome was not obvious. The listener is encouraged to journey to a sonic plane that is both unique and familiar. AlienDay is a powerful offering that dares to dream a future for Afrodiasporic people in their/our totality. Brad’s literary prowess is undeniable. And his star is back on the rise because if Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, and Amiri Baraka had a baby, Brad would be it.