On his new single “Who Do You Love?” Georgia-born, Los Angeles-based pop visionary Terrell Hines sings of an apocalyptic “war on earth” yet finds transcendence. “So much going on can’t help myself,” he wails in the chorus. “If we’re all going down then what do you desire? I’ll take you higher.” The song joyfully blurs sonic borders, opening with a glittery burst of electronics before giving way to psychedelic soul, tense funk, euphoric blues-rock, and gospel-pop anthemics. Listen HERE.
Saturated in vibrant colors, the animated lyric video that accompanies “Who Do You Love?” introduces a character who’s not afraid to go against the grain, pulling a heavy load backwards. A sign nods to Hines‘ hometown of Dublin, Georgia.
Hines, who has already amassed more than five million streams without releasing an album or touring the U.S., displays a polymathic musicality, honed in part during his studies on scholarship at Berklee College of Music. In 2019, he appeared on the title track to Beck’s Hyperspace album and saw a major boost after his music was used during an Apple Keynote.
In 2020, he released his first tape, Portal One: The Mixtape, a nine-track project that featured the raw energy of live instrumentation. Watching the events of the summer unfold prompted Hines to remix his 2019 track “Get Up,” adding a new verse from Vince Staples. NPR Music observed, “in the context of this summer’s movement, lyrics like. I’ve been waiting my whole life’ along with the driving percussion and the increasing desperation in Hines’s voice, [to] begin to take the shape of shouts for justice in a protest moving down a city block.” In October, he released the electrifying single, “We’re All Gonna Be Killed,” which reflected on “the tension of 2020 so far.”
Hines creates an entire ecosystem for his songs, where sonic structures and lyrics are just as likely to be inspired by the sociopolitical as the personal, by functional architecture as abstract art, by the austere science of survivalism as the limitless potential of technology. The best part is, you don’t have to know all that to feel the holistic magic of his work. We hear immediacy, exuberance, freedom, and ingenuity: music as surprising as it is captivating, while he sees a burning question: “If shit popped off and society had to be rebuilt,” asks Hines, “how would I do it?”
