Growing up in the late '90s and early 2000s, Malek Azrael found all his favorite bands from movie soundtracks.
He loved the sound of bands like Smash Mouth, All-American Rejects and Paramore — the way they encapsulated the teenage energy of the turn of the century.
But as a Black artist, Azrael rarely saw people who looked like himself in rock music.
With "Feels Like...", a new EP set to release Friday, Azrael set out to reclaim the genre and offer the face his younger self didn't see.
"Our previous project 'Waves,' that project was a bit of a melting pot. We hit so many different undertones of genres, and just wrapped it all in an R&B tone," Azrael told KCUR's Up To Date. "But I think this project was actually me giving myself permission to lean into something that I've always wanted to do, but I did not feel like I had access to."
Azrael is celebrating the release with "Rock Is Black," a collaborative concert celebrating Black rock musicians, on Friday, Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. at the Zhou B Art Center.
"I'm looking at the history of rock," Azrael said, "and I'm realizing how much people who were in this genre that looked like me, but didn't have the commercial success or recognition, but were huge influences within this genre: Little Richie, Rosetta Tharpe, like just all of these, Lenny Kravitz."
- Malek Azrael, musician
