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Blackman Preach is Cedric Bolton’s stage name when he is outside of Syracuse University classrooms. Bolton has been the Coordinator of Student Engagement at the Office of Multicultural Affairs at SU for the past 18 years. He also runs the Verbal Blend poetry program and teaches Poetry for the People and Diversity in the 21st Century for first-year SU students.

“Hip-hop has always been important to me and my environment,” Bolton said. “When I was in 8th grade I had a 909 Roland drum machine and was in a rap group where I made beats. Music and poetry is my sanctuary — it is therapy for me.”

Bolton will be releasing his third album, “12 Years Gone,” on March 12, but Bolton’s journey to becoming Blackman Preach started back in Minneapolis.

In 2003, Bolton performed at a spoken word event and afterwards an Indigenous audience member approached him and explained how inspired he was by the words Bolton spoke that night.

“He thought it would be cool if he could record me,” Bolton said. “So I went to his studio and recorded with this Native American guy. But I realized he wasn’t using any equipment. Everything was computerized.”

The man explained that everything he needed to produce music was right on his laptop. From that point on, Bolton knew that he could also create his own music once he found the right software and taught himself how to mix.

Just one year later, Bolton recorded his first album, “The State of the Ghetto Address.” His second album “Bumpy Tymes” was released in 2007.

“From 2004 until 2011, I was making tracks in my studio in the basement,” Bolton said. “I ended up taking a long break because life happened: I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer and began a cultural foundations of education master’s program at SU.”

Bolton had to balance his master’s program while getting cancer treatments multiple times a week. His goal to work on a new album was put on the back-burner until he completed the program.

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Bolton decided to name the album he began working on in grad school to “12 Years Gone” to reflect his absence from making music. At this point, Bolton had been working at SU for a while and made connections with alumni and undergrads that supported his musical endeavors.

“I essentially repurposed the album to bring it some excitement. I invited alumni and undergrads that were in my class to a meeting to see if they were interested in helping me out.”

Bolton invited Laurie Fernandez, a junior arts education major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, to help design the album cover. Fernandez met Bolton during her freshman year through a friend who was in one of Bolton’s first-year student courses.

The album cover art was a collaboration between Fernandez and Lance Evans, who is a senior illustration major at SU.

Bolton wanted to include a picture of Malcom X in the background of the cover to pay tribute to one of his heroes. Fernandez and Evans ended up using a selfie Bolton took in his office and placed a picture of Malcom X in the background. Bolton said he wanted the style of the album cover to be both realistic and cartoon-like.

“Lance did the perfect job of melding what not fully cartoon and not fully realistic meant. Lance did the Malcolm X portrait and the portrait of Cedric was a collab between the both of us,” Fernandez said.

Bolton said he loves the fact that his new album isn’t a solo project. He added that he learned how to ask for help from the SU community in terms of production and promotion of the album, which has allowed Bolton to solely focus on the music.

Bolton said he feels a lot of self-imposed pressure to outdo his last project and capture the same magic from his last two albums. “12 Years Gone” hits very close to home for Bolton because his lyrics reveal a more personal side to his journey becoming an artist.

“This album is about what lessons I picked up along the way to help me grow as this 50-year-old person with all of these experiences that I’ve just tucked away for 12 years,” Bolton said. “Figuring out which one was the story to tell has been the hardest part.”

Bolton said he raps about how to have conversations about struggles with race and identity. The two singles that Bolton has released ahead of his new album are titled “We Wear The Mask” and “Bloody Revolution.”

“We Wear The Mask” is a poem from 2017. While writing this piece, Bolton said he thought about Black students at SU who are faced with microaggressions on a daily basis. He raps about the metaphorical mask Black students have to wear in front of their classmates and faculty.

Although “Bloody Revolution” is a piece Bolton released on his first album, he wanted to include a remake of the song on “12 Years Gone” to display the new skills he has learned from years of making beats.

The inspiration for “Bloody Revolution” came after Bolton read an autobiography about Malcom X. He said that he was frustrated because of the different narrative that a Malcom X movie had compared to the autobiography.

“The book shed a lot of light on things the movie didn’t, and the movie was like a true story-type and there were so many elements that just weren’t true. I thought to myself that there needs to be a revolution and when I started to write the poem, I talked about Malcolm and all of the things that I was learning about him,” Bolton said.

Bolton said he always wants to pull his heroes into his work, whether it be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcom X. When Bolton, Fernandez and Evans decided on the album cover, Bolton felt that it was the perfect way to pay tribute to one of his heroes and challenge himself to be a better person.

Bolton dropping “12 Years Gone,” an album with 12 songs, on March 12 was an action he took purposefully.

“Everything I’m doing, even the release dates, is 12, 12, 12. I just need to do some recordings this weekend and hopefully touch up some other tracks,” Bolton said.

Bolton’s wife, Gwendolyn Pough, a professor in SU’s women’s and gender studies department, said she was excited about the new album. She said she has watched Bolton grow in his skill and craft as a poet and musician.

Pough said that Bolton has always had the confidence to perform once he knew his work was good. Now, he has become more sure of himself in terms of telling his story in a raw and authentic way.

“I can definitely trace the evolution of Cedric, and I think this album will be better than the previous two. I’m so excited about his excitement for the project. He has been talking about doing the third album for quite some time now,” Pough said.

Bolton said he has put his heart and soul into this album and hopes the SU community will recognize his growth as a poet and musician.

“This album is a labor of love,” Bolton said. “I just want to tell people that this is me. This is what I do. I really am passionate about this next chapter and releasing more music and instrumental albums.”

Published on February 23, 2022 at 10:19 pm