The Artist B. Soleil: 'Gangsta Rap'

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

The Artist B. Soleil is an Oakland-based “genre-nonconforming” musician, originally from Houston, Texas. They produce, write songs and rap with a musical style influenced by artists like Tupac Shakur, Alice Coltrane and Prince.

“If you think of gender nonconformity as being this spectrum of how we exist, I feel like music is also a similar spectrum,” said B. Soleil. “I can still like hip hop, but with this really cool rock guitar solo sound on it, like everything doesn’t have to be so into boxes.”

Growing up, they were introduced to music at an early age. B. Soleil’s great-grandmother taught them how to play the piano at the age of three and they later joined the marching band and a jazz combo, playing the flute, clarinet and bass.

“I have a lot of family who are also musicians,” they said. “My mom sings, my aunt is a singer and an entertainer. My dad was a music producer. I didn’t have a choice.”

B. Soleil said their song “Gangsta Rap” was inspired when they visited South Africa and saw a t-shirt that said “Gangsta Rap made me do it.”

“When you think about it, [gangster rap] is just very stigmatized, and the antithesis to gangster rap is kind of like reggae conscious Bob Marley,” they said. “I feel like in making the song, it was kind of like a joke of gangsta rap made me write a song like a Rasta, which could be offensive too, in some regard.”

B. Soleil says the message in their music is to always believe in something, and to take a stand for what you believe in.

“I feel like through those motions we can create that change,” they said. “I feel like we should always be using our gifts and our tools to do that.”

If you’d like to hear them live, The Artist B. Soleil will be performing at 3545 International Boulevard in Oakland on Aug. 31st at 4 p.m.