There is desperation and urgency in Fantastic Negrito's new album Please Don't Be Dead, out June 15 via Cooking Vinyl and Blackball Universe. For anyone who ever felt like it was over yet hoped it wasn’t, this is your music. “I wrote this album because I fear for the life of my black son,” said Negrito. “I fear for the lives of my daughters. I am uncertain about what kind of future they will face. Will someone shoot up their school? Will they become addicted to prescription pills? Will they wind up on the street, sleeping under freeways and overpasses? Will the police murder my son? I came up with the name Please Don’t Be Dead because I felt like we’d lost our way as a society — and I know what happens when you chase the wrong things. It’s the story of my life.”

Please Don't Be Dead – which follows 2016’s Grammy Award-winning The Last Days Of Oakland – is heralded by the lead track, ‘Plastic Hamburgers’, out now. “With 'Plastic Hamburgers' I wanted to come out swinging,” added Negrito. “With everything happening in the world, I wanted to take it head on. Addiction, guns, censorship, over-consumption. I wanted people to feel like this is our song, our rallying cry: lets tear down the walls that separate us and face who we really are.”

Fantastic Negrito – a.k.a. musician Xavier Dphrepaulezz (pronounced Deh-frep-aw-lez) – is truly an artist for these times, a multi-talented, genre-agnostic original whose life and work embody the struggle, energy, truth and creativity of black music. Negrito was raised in an orthodox Muslim household, the eighth of 14 children of a deeply religious Somali-Caribbean immigrant. The family moved from western Massachusetts to Oakland, CA, when Negrito was just 12 years old, his new hometown’s vibrant black community providing a massive culture shock after what was an extremely conservative childhood.

Fantastic Negrito has spent much of the past two years on the road, including sold out headline shows, stage-stealing festival performances, and a series on North American and European tours supporting his great supporter and friend, the late Chris Cornell as well as Cornell’s legendary supergroup Temple of the Dog. He also opened for Sturgill Simpson and many others.

MAY

23rd – Nottingham, Bodega

24th – Manchester, Night & Day

26th – Baden, Blues Festival

30th – Glasgow, King Tuts

JUNE

1st – London, Dingwalls

2nd – Bristol, Thekla

AUGUST 

8th – Winchester, Boomtown Fair

Cooking Vinyl is proud to announce a new partnership with the 2017 Grammy-winning artist Fantastic Negrito and his imprint Blackball Universe. The UK label have re-issued Fantastic Negrito’s current and critically acclaimed debut album The Last Days of Oakland (recipient of a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy Award) with two new additional tracks, just in time for his imminent European tour.

The new tracks – ‘Push Back’ and ‘The Shadows’ -- are both produced by Xavier Dphrepaulezz (aka Fantastic Negrito). The extra tracks are available now for download and streaming, and have been released worldwide along with the rest of the album on CD and 180g vinyl. Musicians on these new recordings include Masa Kohama and Tomas Salcedo (guitars), Cornelius Mims (bass guitar), Lionel Holoman Jr. (piano and organ), with vocals, additional piano, additional guitar, drum programming and claps by Xavier Dphrepaulezz.

In his teens, Xavier ran the streets of Oakland, before finding music and eventually signing with Prince's management. After a slow recovery from a car crash that left him in a coma, Xavier undertook several different musical alter egos, but in the end, he walked away from music -- only to re-emerge years later as Fantastic Negrito.

A performer with something to say, Fantastic Negrito runs an arts-collective in his hometown of Oakland, and performed at Bernie Sanders' rallies in New Hampshire, Las Vegas and San Francisco during the 2016 US Presidential campaign. Of the new songs, he says, “We must unify -- not divide -- along the lines of our differences. We have a common enemy: distraction and propaganda. Our strength is in our diversity. We push back against our common enemies: fear, hate, bigotry, misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, classism... these parasites, these carcinogens that live in the shadows of our society. One world, one love, one race.”

Fantastic Negrito has once again invited UK friends, Miraculous Mule to support him at his London, Manchester and Nottingham dates.

UK Dates:

July 28th                London @ Nell's Jazz and Blues | BUY TICKETS

July 29th                Cambridge @ Cambridge Folk Festival | BUY TICKETS

July 31st                Manchester @ Band On The Wall BUY TICKETS

Aug 3rd                  Nottingham @ The Bodega | BUY TICKETS