Melanin 9 “Amulets” Cassette Re-Release
Some may remember Melanin 9 from his album Magna Carta (2012), or Old Pictures (2017). M9 has since stopped making music, rendering his old hits archived. One of those archival tracks is Amulets (2014), for which an album is to be released on November 30th through the revived Blunted Astronaut label. SOuthside spoke to Blunted Astronaut as well as M9 himself to get the lowdown on this release.
The same year Blunted Astronaut folded, Melanin 9 put out Amulets. Now, after a 7 year hiatus, Blunted Astronaut is back and taking pre-orders for a 2021 remaster of the track. The album is available to pre-order through their website, and comes in both digital download and cassette tape formats. This is the fourth cassette release from Blunted Astronaut this year.
The cover art pays homage to the Bruton Music Library series, mimicking their unique design that cultivated throughout the 1980s, changing the wording of “Bruton Music” to “Blunted Music”. Accompanying the release is a music video for Amulets, directed by Dan Tropez. Amulets, originally produced and performed by The Summit and Melanin 9 respectively, is remixed twice on the album set to release at the end of the month - one remix from Mr Brown, and the other by Lewis Parker.
“We weren’t getting the looks we should’ve been getting.”
Melanin 9 began making music back in ‘06, releasing his first mixtape High Fidelity in 2007. However, the North London artist told SOuthside that “personal occurrences and circumstances led me to making that decision [to stop making music]. Plus I felt like ‘I’ or ‘we’ weren’t getting the looks we should’ve been getting. It felt like we were being blocked from certain things”.
In any case, the re-release of Amulets could indicate that M9 isn’t quite done just yet. “I’m not really sure why I came up with that title”, he told SOuthside. “Amulets are something I’ve always respected, knowing what their purpose was, so I just ran with it for an EP”.
The 8-track tape can be pre-ordered from Blunted Astronaut’s website with prices starting from £7.