Ahead of his performance at Cambridge Folk Festival in the UK next month, three times Grammy® award winner Fantastic Negrito (neé Xavier Dphrepaulezz) shares the new single ‘Undefeated Eyes’ featuring the legendary Police frontman, solo artist, and 17 times Grammy® winner, Sting.
The release also comes with the news that Fantastic Negritowill play a headline show in London on the 29th October at Islington Assembly Hall.
‘Undefeated Eyes’ is a soulful, sentimental, and grooving track; and the first release of 2024 for Fantastic Negrito and Storefront Records. Written and produced by Xavier Dphrepaulezz, the track was born in 2020, just days before COVID lockdown policies went into effect. Sting spent the day in Fantastic Negrito’s West Oakland studio laying down what you get to hear today.
Fantastic Negrito and Sting let their voices be the perfect complement to each other as they tail off on their own only to mesh back and forth throughout the track. Elegantly gritty, harrowingly soulful, and at the end of it all, full of life; ‘Undefeated Eyes’tells a story of misplaced trust and takes a deep dive into the sometimes low points of relationships.
Fantastic Negrito explains, “I was heading for a divorce, then I connected with Sting and recorded this song. There is enough chaos hate pain, destruction, infidelity, and fame whoring in the world. I always strive to not be a part of that”.
Fantastic Negrito and Sting will share a stage on Friday July 19th at the Beach Festival in Nieuwpoort, Belgium, ahead of his next performance in the UK at the Cambridge Folk Festival on the 26th July. Today also brings further news of a UK and Europe headline tour, including London’s Islington Assembly Hall on the 29th October 2024.
A larger than life character, Fantastic Negrito’s own story is stranger than fiction. He first released an album in 1996, but a near fatal car crash in 1999 effectively ended the first chapter of his career. It resulted in him spending three weeks in a coma and initially losing almost all movement in his right hand, drastically limiting his ability to play guitar. Effectively reborn under his new artist identity of Fantastic Negrito, his career got underway when his phenomenal, charismatic performance won NPR Music’s prestigious Tiny Desk Concert Contest.
All three of Fantastic Negrito’s previous studio albums have won the GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Blues album: The Last Days of Oakland, Please Don’t Be Dead and Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?. He has toured with artists as varied as Sturgill Simpson and Chris Cornell, collaborated with Sting and E-40, launched his own Storefront Records label, and founded the Revolution Plantation, an urban farm aimed at youth education and empowerment.
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