Heems announces new album LAFANDAR, shares song

After a six-year break from rapping, New York City’s Heems is coming back with a new album, record label, and lifestyle brand. LAFANDAR, a project entirely produced by Lapgan, will arrive on February 16 through Veena Sounds, a new label founded by the former Das Racist member. Today, you can hear its first single, “Accent” featuring Saul Williams.

The new song begins with a spoken word introduction from Williams over chillwave-worthy chords, before the beat opens up with a melancholy sample over dutiful boom-bap drums. Heems’s verse, part protest and part reflection, originally debuted in 2017, when he performed with Swet Shop Boys on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and was further developed after the murder of George Floyd.

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Veena Sounds, the label releasing LAFANDAR, is part of a new lifestyle brand launched by Heems called Veena. Named after Heems’s mother, Veena is described in a press release as “an ode to the collision of his South Asian heritage and New York roots” that “explores the implementation of self-care through Heems’s passions — fashion, flows, and food.”

The first Veena releases, available to purchase now, are the debut vinyl editions of Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down Man, the first two projects from Das Racist, as well as two shirt designs from Himanshu Suri and Peter Chung. Finally, you can also purchase a jar of 100% organic, made-in-India cold-pressed virgin coconut oil.

“My world was one of graffiti and golgappas, skateboards and saris, music and Mughals, and so on,” Heems says in a press statement. “This is what my music sounds like.” Listen to “Accent” below.