Walking Tours by Fellowman

These songs were written on walks around the city of Charlottesville, VA. No matter where you live, if you are able to do so, I hope you take these songs with you when you explore your habitat, on foot under an open sky. I hope you connect them with the sights, sounds & smells of the places you discover, & I hope you take a moment to remember those who can’t.
Love, Fellowman.

Walking Tours, by Charlottesville rapper and producer Fellowman, consists of eight songs which are all narratives in the hiphop storytelling tradition, specific to the Charlottesville area and focusing on systemic inequities arising from its racial and class tensions.

In addition to the digital download, Fellowman is releasing Walking Tours in a limited run of cassette tapes. Each tape purchased will come with a portable cassette player. “I wanted to encourage people to listen to the album while walking,” the rapper says. “Most people don’t have cassette players anymore, so if they buy the tape and I give them a Walkman with it, they almost have to take it out for a stroll.”

Though Fellowman is known in regional hiphop circles for his intricate wordplay, he took a different approach to the composition of Walking Tours. “I’m aware that my authorial voice can be somewhat overwhelming,” he says. “That works for a certain kind of rap song, but for this project I wanted to dial that back so the listener can fully engage with the stories I’m telling.” The result is a stripped-down collection of story songs that find Fellowman rapping from the perspective of a police car, a utility pole, a troubled high school student, and more.

Musically, the album maintains that no-frills aesthetic with largely organic instrumentation: live drums, guitars, pianos and a variety of keyboards, all played by Fellowman himself. Though he usually features some of his own beats alongside the work of other producers, Walking Tours marks the first time Fellowman has released a project consisting entirely of his own production.

The album includes the song “Rockets,” first released as a single on July 4th, 2019, which interpolates a melodic line from “The Star-Spangled Banner” to tell the story of the rapper’s evolving awareness of the complexities of Independence Day celebrations through several years of living in Charlottesville. Also on the album is a studio recording of “Paddywagon Bounce,” a crowd favorite in Fellowman’s live set for years. The song, spoken from the perspective of a police car, reflects on the use and abuse of power while using the chorus to list the most common models of squad cars, like a rapper shouting out his crew.

Literate, lyrical, hard-hitting hiphop from Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

Fellowman is a rapper, producer, promoter and educator.

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