In the mid- to late-’00s, Miami rapper Soarse Spoken was a fixture in the small, but fervent underground hip-hop world. The Colombian-born artist specialized in thoughtful, sometimes bilingual wordplay that celebrated consciousness as much as it did beautiful women. But after a particularly creative spurt a few years back, Soarse seemingly dropped off the scene.

“I had a bad experience with the indie label I was working with before my hiatus, and at the same time, I was working a full-time job for a very profitable company and it took up a lot of my time,” he recalls. “The combination of these things along with just regular life stuff here and there made it really hard for me to focus on music.”

A true artist can never stay away from the craft for too long, though, and sure enough, Soarse re-appeared this past winter with a new mixtape, Starve the Hunger. Playing more like a proper album, it’s a return to form that details Soarse’s two apparent main interests over a collection of rattling, no-nonsense boom-bap.
Case in point: Check out the track “Pu$$y & Art,” for which Soarse just released a new video, shot and edited in New York this past fall by Juan Herrera. You’ll find all of classic hip-hop’s semiotic markers here, from hoodies to graffiti-ed outer-borough overpasses, plus a neck-snapper of a track from DJ Sharpsound.

We caught up with Soarse to see what chat about the video and his return to music. Here’s what he had to say.

Salty Eggs: So what brought you back to music after the time off?

Soarse Spoken: I couldn’t keep the creative bug away, and I was offered financial backing for any projects I’d be willing to work on as long as I committed to making music my career. All artists come to these crossroads, and I chose the music over everything else. A lot of sacrifices have been made and a lot will be made, but I don’t see myself doing anything else but this.

Your mixtape, Starve the Hunger, came out after you had spent a lot of time in New York. Did you go there specifically to work on or promote it?

I decided to plan the trip to to culminate with the tape’s release and with CMJ. Although I wasn’t on any official CMJ bill I wanted to make as much impact as possible for promoting the release. So I wanted to be in New York, while at the same time promoting it on my online communities to cover more “ground,” so to speak.

Unfortunately, due to the hurricane and the couple of snowstorms New York was hit with while I was up there, some of those plans I had to promote the tape got delayed or canceled altogether. Although, I  was still able to introduce my homie Chuck Inglish from the Cool Kids at his set at Webster Hall for an official CMJ show. I was also able to perform a small set at Gallery Bar as well as film two videos, including the clip for “Pu$$y & Art,” and network with countless artists and musicians, so the trip wasn’t a total loss.

I decided to film the video for “Pu$$y & Art” there because my homie Shottie, who is featured on the song, and my homie Juan Herrera, who filmed the video, actually both live up there. Seeing as how I was using my time as efficiently as possible to promote Starve the Hunger, I took the opportunity that Juan was down to do the video for me with no budget and that Shottie was available to shoot the video, and we made it happen.

Did you have a specific concept in mind for the video?

The video was made with almost entirely no budget, so we kept things simple, I guess, for that specific reason. We were lucky because we were filming in Brooklyn, specifically in Bushwick, and there is a lot of art on the walls out there. Also, the director’s friend was kind enough to lend us her time and she’s the one you see ripping up the posters with the lyrics in the video.

We really didn’t even write a treatment for the video. We just kind of winged it and shot a ton of footage. If I would’ve written the treatment for this song it would’ve been way different, but in the end I really liked the way it came out, so I’m happy with it. It was straight guerrilla filming.

How did the guest star, Shottie, wind up on the track and in the video?

He’s an MC from Miami, now residing in New York, who I met a while back. Ever since I first heard him spit, he’s been one of my favorite MCs. He was in a group called IDee4 and they used to put out some really dope mixapes here in Miami back in the day. Those mixtapes used to get a lot of play on my CD player.

On top of that, his music grind is something I really respect. We actually worked on some stuff in the past but never officially put anything out, so when I started getting beats from DJ Sharpsound for Starve the Hunger, I knew he was one of the people I had to have on there. He was one of the first people I sent beats to and after having come up with the concept for “Pu$$y & Art” I knew it’d be something he would sound really good on.

Why do you refer to Starve the Hunger as a mixtape rather than a proper album?

Besides the legalities of releasing a sample-based musical project without clearance, it’s that I hadn’t put something out officially since 2007′s Third World Prophecies, besides a small EP via digital release in 2011 titled Unreleased & Unfuckwitable). I wanted to put something out to let everyone know that Soarse Spoken was still alive and kicking. The one thing that does make Starve the Hunger different from the usual mixtape is that is was entirely produced by one person, DJ Sharpsound, who did an incredible job.

I am currently working on an official release titled Rawcenticity, and this project also has one cohesive sound via a Miami/Chicago production duo known as Model.Fragment. We are projecting the release date for this album to be around the second or third quarter of this year.

DJ Sharpsound, Juan Herrera, Soarse Spoken