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Kalup Linzy ft. James Franco

'Turn It Up' available now from Dutty Artz

Photo 1 courtesy of of Soap at MoCA

Photo 2 courtesy of Rabbit Bandini Productions

For the past year, video- and performance-artist Kalup Linzy has been collaborating with Hollywood’s leading Renaissance man, actor and artist James Franco. Things began when Franco, a fan of Linzy’s infamous soap opera-inspired Conversations Wit De Churen video series (now in the permanent collection of MoMA and the Whitney), invited Linzy to appear on General Hospital, where Franco was playing an artist named Franco.

A friendship was struck. The pair continued working together, intermingling fantasy with reality, upturning gender roles, and, crucially, doing this all across a wild spectrum of platforms, from the TV soap opera that reached deep into the hearts of middle America to experimental videos on YouTube or installations in ‘proper’ galleries.

In short, few artists feel as contemporary or as relevant as Kalup Linzy and James Franco. Their shared exploration of where art can be placed poses questions of a Duchampian profundity, made all the more exciting by their seriously playful engagement with pop culture.

Dutty Artz is proud to announce the debut of Kalup Linzy ft. James Franco - Turn It Up. The EP will be available on July 5th, both digitally and as a limited edition 7”. Along with Kalup and Franco’s vocals, it features two songs produced by DJ Rupture, and a third song written and produced by Linzy. Each song will have an accompanying music video, shot and directed by the artists, with some surprise guest cameos...

Rising (Both Sides Now) is an emotionally expansive song. It begins with James’s fragile vocals reinterpreting Joni Mitchell’s poetry to great, surprising effect. Then Kalup draws on his gospel roots as DJ Rupture’s sultry R&B beat kicks in (built with his
partner in Dutty Artz, Matt Shadetek), and together Kalup and Franco shift the tone from world-weary to affirmative.

Turn It Up (So We Can Turn It Out) is a more upbeat dance jam, with Rupture collaborator Brent Arnold adding driving guitar around a propulsive neo-disco beat. James and Kalup share vocal duties here, doubling all the lines. Fly Away continues in a positive vein, evoking one of Linzy’s recurring themes -- strength through vulnerability, as James adds spoken word relationship real talk.

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