We’ve had the opportunity to follow the career of Adrian Marcel since he first broke out in the early 2010’s through his association with Raphael Saddiq and his major label deal. Nearly a decade later, it’s fun to reflect back on his journey as he’s managed to evolve his sound yet maintain the elements of his music that have made us admire him all of these years.
That is no different on his recently released project “RNBay SZN”. We had the opportunity to catch up with him in a recent interview and discuss the new EP, what RNBay SZN means to him, and much more.
YouKnowIGotSoul: Introduce us to this RNBay era you’ve entered into recently and what it means to you.
Adrian Marcel: The RNBay culture stems from my upbringing here in the Bay Area. Born and raised in East Oakland. But at the same time, living pretty much all over the Bay. It’s a sound that we’ve had for years. If you go back to the hyphy movement with the Keak Da Sneak and Mistah F.A.B., and even past that, the E-40 and Too Short and Yukmouth and Dru Down. We always have this sound that represented the bay area. For me coming up as a kid, this was the only place in the world where DJ’s were mixing these artists with Justin Timberlake and Mario and Usher. The whole time, whether it’s a slow love song or a rap song, we still got stupid! That feeling is what RNBay is to me. It’s a more elevated hyphy. The beats are slapping, it’s something that you can bounce to. There is a groove to it like that. What really makes it RNBay is that the lyrics and lingo we speak, we are putting out lingo in these records. When we are from the Bay, we talk and love different, we move different and vibe different. Really putting a hard focus on putting that in the music so that people understand it. This has been a place for so long that people have come here, and fell in love with our lingo. We wanted to give our spin in the R&Bay realm to that. It’s really just the way that we R&B out here in the Bay Area. It’s dope that this is something that’s been around for awhile. You had J. Valentine. That was like the first person to really, really start pushing the line on it. It was all of these pieces of it that were coming out, and with me growing up and my partner Sonny B., we came together and said we were going to put a hard focus on it, and take a couple of years and get into his studio and really formulate and cultivate it to where it’s not just a song or two, this is almost 250+ records in the vault. This is the first six that we’re releasing. “RNBay SZN” is really just the first installment to a bigger project.
YouKnowIGotSoul: How did you narrow it down to six tracks to make this “RNBay SZN” project?
Adrian Marcel: Obviously you can imagine how difficult it is when you love all of the records. The process that me and Sonny B when we are in the studio creating it, we love every record, and we are not leaving the studio until we love it, and love it more than the last one. So it was definitely an extremely difficult process, but I think our take on it was more about creating a sampler. A lot of these records on this project were some of the first records. The record with DJ Drama “Pullin Up”, that was the first record we recorded together. In 2020 coming into Covid, and being in lock down, I really had to take a step back and decide if I still loved creating music, like I did before. You know with the labels, and the previous career of mine, it weighed on me. So I think Covid gave me a chance to recalibrate things and find a new way of creating. When I started to create these records, “Pullin Up” was the first one to really open my eyes to this new Adrian. How can I come back from the “GMFU” and “98th” and revamp and refresh myself. For me it was a very simple thing. It was stop thinking about going so deep into it, and just showcasing for people who I really am, and where I’m from. That’s why it’s RNBay, going back into the soil. Records like “Pullin Up”, “Lovin Me” was like the third record we did. Just conversations about how we wanted to represent, what was going to be the face of this sound first. We have a lot of dope records that I think are amazing. Also in that, people have got to find you again, so I don’t want to throw out certain records and they get skipped. So it was scientific how we decided to put these records together. We started this in 2020, we’re in 2024 now, we’ve been planning this for three years, and planning the next ten years out. I know that people are going to get it and get a chance to digest the sound first. As we keep going, it’s going to keep growing and evolving on you. We just wanted to make sure we did it delicately and did it the right way. When you talk about planning out 10 years, you’ve got to really be strategic.
Click the YouTube link above to watch/listen to the entire interview. Also check out the RNBay SZN EP below!