Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Album: Clarity [ALBUM]
Track: 5 of 12
Title: They'll Always Be There (Interlude)
Artist: Black Sumo
Label: First Word Records
Cat#: FW368
Formats: Digital
Digital Release: 8th May 2026

About This Release:

First Word Records is proud to bring you 'Clarity', a new 12-track beat-tape from Black Sumo.

Black Sumo is the instrumental-hip hop alias of KRTS aka Kurtis Hairston; an artist raised in Pittsburgh, USA, traversing to Brooklyn, NY, and currently residing in Berlin, Germany.

In the early period of the pandemic, during a walk & talk with a "Covid-meter" of distance between each other, KRTS strolled the empty streets of Berlin with a friend. The details of the discussion are a blur, but the statement "yo, that is as rare as a black sumo wrestler" is recalled. They laughed & continued their walk. KRTS began reflecting on those words. "Black Sumo… That could be an artist name… But, what kind of music?…". His friend agreed & quickly confidently replied "definitely hip hop beats".

So was born the moniker & the concept. It began as a homage to the instrumental beat tapes he'd make in his dark & musty basement in Pennsylvania at the turn of the century. Raw & gritty, they combined jazzy lo-fi boom bap, reminiscent of early 90's East Coast & Bay Area sounds, with added flares of dramatic layered melodies, and a hint of Shoegaze-esque walls of reverb.

Sonically 'Clarity' embodies a conglomerate of those aural textures across it's 12 tracks; from filtered ethereal ambience, to headnod hip hop. It includes the recent singles 'Silent Stones' and 'Rehearsal'.

2020 saw the first fruits of this project enter the world, on the self-released beat tape 'The Defeatist', or as Kurtis put it at the time "the journey of becoming whole again".

He further explains "what I did find as far as 'Clarity' during the making of these tracks is how much of an immigrant I really am. I think it really became clear during the BLM marches in Berlin…".

A number of tracks were created during the bleak Berlin Winter all the way into Spring; the clarity here being what appears in Spring that Winter was hiding.

The Black Sumo project was effectively put to bed at this point, only to have tracks revisited very recently, five years on, as a new form of 'Clarity' for the feeling of these compositions came to light. A better understanding of the period, and an acceptance & embrace of the art that was created.

And so, it was felt the time was now right to release this material, now revised & revisited with a clearer state of mind. With 'Clarity'…

'Clarity' is available May 8th on all digital platforms, with a limited cassette version available exclusively on Bandcamp.