Richmond-born, Chicago-based artist McKinley Dixon has announced his signing with City Slang with a new single, ‘Sun, I Rise’, which features Angélica Garcia. The track comes alongside an accompanying video directed by Ja-Wan Gardner. Check it out below.
“I wanted to tell this story of a boy who’s sort of a mixture of Icarus and King Midas,” Dixon explained in a statement. “The beginning of the song emphasises someone who longs for the sun, someone who has been close before. The character is sorta yelling at the sun and pleading for warmth and discussing the fall down.”
Gardner added: “I was heavily impacted by ‘Sun, I Rise’ when I first heard the record because I have always viewed the sun as my energy source, and ‘the light’ as a metaphor of something to pursue in order to establish a better life for myself. Dixon’s opening line—’How I could underestimate sun? How I coulda been so blind from the light that it brung’—refers to a state of unawareness of ‘the light,’ so I used this opportunity to show what it is like for a Black male to chase and bask in the light, and how that energy is transferred from peer to peer, resulting in inevitable growth for those who accept the sun/light.”
McKinley Dixon’s debut album, For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her, arrived last year.