Topaz Jones – “Herringbone”

Topaz Jones – “Herringbone”

It’s been a while since Topaz Jones has put out an album — his last, Arcade, was all the way back in 2016. But now he’s gearing up for a new one, and it comes with an accompanying short film. Both are called Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma, and the film’s already got some buzz. Last weekend, it won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at Sundance. Jones wrote it based on his own life experience, and co-directed with rubberband; Black Thought also has a cameo in it.

It’s a bit of symbiotic project with the album. “The film is all the things I couldn’t say in musical notes,” Jone said in a statement. “The music is everything I couldn’t write in words, even though there’s lyrics that speak to it as well, but emotionally, it’s everything I couldn’t necessarily write down and the film is everything that I couldn’t put in song.” There’s no official word on the album’s arrival quite yet, but in the meantime Jones has shared his first preview of it.

Today, Jones unveiled the single “Herringbone.” As you might expect from a new Topaz Jones track, “Herringbone” is a vibrant, infectious fusion of funk and rap and soul. While there’s a lot of meditative weight on Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma altogether as Jones looks to make sense of his identity, he turns it into something ebullient here. Check it out below.

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