Did you feel that vibration on Sunday, around 7 p.m.? No, it wasn’t the New Madrid finally shifting under our feet – it was the team at UNAPOLOGETIC., once again shaking things up with the launch of UndergroundAF radio.
This new platform – which is really a platform inside a platform, since it lives in the Unapologetic World app – is all about the unfinished. If it’s unmixed, unmastered, unpolished, and as yet unheard, you can hear it on UndergroundAF radio.
The idea was born when IMAKEMADBEATS was scrolling through a library of Unapologetic’s own unreleased songs. “I was thinking, ‘We should release these… but I don’t feel like mixing them,’” he says. “I’d be willing to bet every artist has hundreds of songs on their phone, on their computer, that are unfinished, that no one will ever hear.”
He says UndergroundAF is about vulnerability and sincerity, two of Unapologetic’s driving values. “And to me that means, not dressing it up,” he says. “Showing what it was before the polish and the paint. It’s another way to show what we stand for. Artists feel like, ‘We’re not gonna look good unless we do all the magic’ – but sometimes we look good just rolling out of bed, and sometimes you’d ruin it by doing all the other stuff.”
And so, each week, the UndergroundAF team – Shera, Ariel, and Zero – will release a new playlist of music as well as original visual content and, coming soon, artist interviews and features captured at food spots around the city. The playlist will be populated by artist and producer submissions, and eventually, those submissions will have a global footprint. Just a few days into its launch, most of UndergroundAF’s submissions have come from Memphis, but they’re already seeing interest and lurkers from around the world.
The interface will allow users to stream the playlist, but also save music for offline use. With new content dropping each week, the UAF team says success looks like true benefit for the artists whose ideas, rough mixes, stems and more will see the light of day for the first time. Success is giving those ideas a home and, of course – disrupting how people perceive music.
“It’s almost like a cipher,” IMAKEMADBEATS says of UAF Radio, comparing these unfinished songs to the off-the-dome rhymes from improvising emcees. “But when you see that group of people rapping to each other outside in the cold with hoodies on, you feel like you can join in like I want to get in on this.”
Still not sure how you can fit in and engage? First, download the Unapologetic World app. Then, check out this video to get the scoop on how to use UAF Radio.
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