Bay Area-based artist Karega Bailey has resurfaced with a new collaborative album called Legacy Talk Only featuring producer/longtime friend Jonny Gold. Boasting 10 tracks, the project finds Bailey celebrating his life as a family man and imparting the hard-won wisdom he's earned along the way. The accompanying video for "Proverbs 31" shines a light on not only Bailey's faith but also his unwavering love for his wife Dr. Felicia Gangloff-Bailey, daughter Kamali and their "daughter in heaven," who they lost in 2020.
"Legacy Talk Only is what it sounds like when Hip Hop gets to grow up, when Hip Hop gets to become fathers and husbands and thinking about legacy, right?" Bailey tells RAPstation. "That's what we mean when we say wellness is the new genre. In all truth, it couldn't have happened without my faith, the level of grief that I experienced and what felt like was almost going to silence me, it was really my faith that kept me going.
"And love, in practice, not just as a word but in practice from people who love me. Shout out to Jonny Gold who came to my home. We recorded a lot of this project in my house or at his house. And as you see on IG, I did a lot of the recording with my daughter in my arms. It was not easy."
Bailey continues to be a breath of fresh air in a genre that's so often littered with ugliness. As he raps on "Black Family Legacy," "Miss me with that misogynistic shit that you be on/'Cause the Black woman is God, I've seen it for myself/And you can't cheat on God without lying to yourself," while sprinkling lyrics from 2Pac's "Dear Mama" into the mix. He continues, "We need to be real to our women/Be here for our children and heal our village."
Legacy Talk Only is bursting at the seams with valuable lessons that just happen to be set to dope beats. Find the full album here and watch "Proverbs 31" below.
