Earlier this month, Music Times reported that Ab-Soul had finally revealed the album title for his highly anticipated release and according to Vibe magazine, he recently gave fans a "whopping digital delivery" releasing both the album artwork and release date for These Days...
The magazine's site reports that the TDE rapper from Carson also released a snippet of the visuals for his track "Stigmata."
The clip shows Soulo wearing a crown of thorns carrying a cross as he raps through the desert.
From the looks of it, "Stigmata" may bear resemblance to some scenes from Nas' "Hate Me Now" video but it is actually Nas' "The Cross" that influenced Soul. He explained during an interview with Jay Z's Life+Times.
"How the song came about, in all honesty, was that I wanted to do a song about stigma," Soul said. "I ended up looking up the word stigmata, thinking that it was an extension of the word stigma. After looking it up I realized that I had already been dancing around this Jesus concept within my lyrics. I had already had this concept strung in, so when I looked up the definition of stigmata, it just all made sense. It only made sense for me to title it "Stigmata." Also, I always like to reference my favorite shit, whether it's new or old, in a manner where you know I did it and the "The Cross" reference made perfect sense."
Check out a sneak peek of the video below.
These Days... drops June 24.
