Amoeba Music

Hip-hop artist B. Dolan plays live and signs his latest album, The Wound Is Not The Body (out now on vinyl via Four Finger Distro), at Amoeba Berkeley on Saturday, August 10th at 3pm. The show is free and all-ages are welcomed. Buy The Wound Is Not The Body at Amoeba Berkeley that day to join the signing line after his live set.

In the aftermath of an emergency spine surgery that radically altered his perspective and body, B. Dolan emerges after a four-year hiatus from touring and releasing LPs with a new collection of songs, a new stage show, and a harrowing new story to tell.

Written during COVID lockdown and a quarantined cervical spine fusion & recovery, The Wound Is Not The Body (a title sampled from Adrienne Maree Brown's poem "The Founding Wound") winds through nine new rap songs littered with strange characters, pandemic fatigue, autobiographical thoughts on hip-hop, living and aging, and resolve in the face of new challenges.

Production from Ant, HEBL, Small Professor, Widowmaker, and Dolan himself provide a soulful and minimalist backdrop, while he gets some of the most carefully crafted bars of his life across in an unhurried, confident fashion.

Aside from impeccable guest vocals from Nya Chomba (who is coincidentally tearing up the current season of American Idol) on two tracks and an appearance from Yah-Ra of Planet Asia for some spoken bars, the album is notably devoid of features. The emcee is front and center for this one, and the songs feel like tightly focused meditations on moments, impressions and memories. "The Wound is Not The Body" features a narrator writing alone in recovery, sounding like he and his work have been torn down, and rebuilt from the ground up.

The album is mixed by DS3K and mastered by Daddy Kev. Available direct from B. Dolan or via Symphonic Distro (US) and Speech Development Records / The Orchard (EU).