Even after bouncing between Wales and Los Angeles for acting work in recent years, Dua Saleh is still making music heavily rooted in the Upper Midwest.
The St. Paul-raised rapper/singer/poet/actor just announced details of their new album, “Of Earth & Wires,” which features Bon Iver on three tracks as well as production work by Twin Cities-based sonic gurus Psymun and Ryan Olson and Iowa-reared SZA collaborator Billy Lemos.
“These songs came together organically while creating in Minneapolis,” Saleh said in a news release touting the record’s May 15 release date.
To start the rollout for the LP, Saleh’s record label Ghostly International posted two of the Bon Iver-featuring tracks simultaneously. One is a SZA-like laid-back soul number titled “Glow,” and the other is a more upbeat but similarly dramatic and ambient tune called “Flood.” Saleh said the latter song was inspired by climate-related flooding they saw while filming the hit Netflix TV series “Sex Education” in Cardiff, Wales.
“The flood became an allegory for staying afloat rather than drowning in grief,” said Saleh, who also cited inspiration for the record from the civil war that ignited in their native country of Sudan in 2023.
They went on to recount how Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon helped “Flood” come to life: “Justin freestyled the hook in the moment, and I later wrote to the beat. Watching his cathartic process and hearing the emotion move through his voice pushed me to confront parts of my past I hadn’t fully faced.”
Saleh and Vernon have worked together several times before, including a collaboration with Travis Scott on the Houston hip-hop star’s “Utopia” album. Olson (Poliça, Marijuana Deathsquads) and Psymun (the Stand4rd, Young Thug) are also longtime collaborators. Psymun had a heavy hand in Saleh becoming a musician in the first place, after he saw viral clips of them performing at a Button Poetry event in Minneapolis in 2017.
Currently residing in Los Angeles, Saleh has not announced any performance dates yet to promote “Of Earth & Wires.” The record is now available for preorder via the label’s site Ghostly.com.
