Candice Antique juggles a lot. On top of being a new mother, she’s the CEO of the arts and education non-profit Edutainment for Equity and the lead vocalist of the group Antique Naked Soul.
The quartet also features talented vocalists Jayme Brown and N’gala McCoy, as well as well-known beatboxer and emcee Tommy Soulati Shepherd.
They all come together and make music only using sounds made with their mouths. I’m talking about beatboxing that imitates actual drums, and puckering up their lips to sound like wind instruments. While there is some assistance from sampling and looping machines, their art is pretty much all vocal wizardry.
Antique Naked Soul’s funky melodies are reminiscent of bebop, soul and swing from the late ’40s through the early ’60s, and the group’s attire is from those eras as well.
In talking to Candice about the group’s forthcoming album, Diamond & Bullets, which drops in March, she told me that it covers a lot of topics, but the central focus is injustice and police brutality, especially on the song “Burn.” The lyrics to that track spoke to me: “Give me an apocalypse / And I would dance / ‘Cause I gave democracy its last chance.”
