Album Notes

Soul Beauty Vol. 1 is the first album from composer/musician Jason “Spanky” Edwards. The Brooklyn-born Washingtonian began playing piano at age five, and started composing music in middle school. As a child, he fell in love with hip-hop, and his father, a pastor and saxophonist, encouraged his love for jazz music. After teaching himself several other instruments (which he himself plays on the album) throughout high school, he spent four years as the drummer of Like Mindz, a popular hip-hop band at the University of Pennsylvania, performing with several other groups during his college career in Philadelphia.

Having had training in the jazz, classical, funk, soul, and rock idioms, Edwards also began studying West African and Afro-Carribean percussion. Soul Beauty Vol. 1 contains a blend of these styles: from the Native Tongues-esque jazz-rap of “Hiphop (ft. Vocab)” to the neo-soul thump of “Wasting Time (ft. Nicole)” and the Like Mindz classic “Bounce (ft. Legion the Shiva).” Featuring many talented artists from the Like Mindz collective, Soul Beauty Vol. 1 is an album for any lover of true Soul Music.