Fantastic Negrito, the three times Grammy award winner has shared his new single ‘Undefeated Eyes’ – featuring 17 times Grammy award winner Sting.
Fantastic Negrito and Sting will share a stage on July 19 at the Beach Festival in Nieuwpoort, Belgium, ahead of his next performance in the UK at the Cambridge Folk Festival on July 26. Today also brings further news of a UK and Europe headline tour, including London’s Islington Assembly Hall on October 29, 2024.
Sting spent a day at Fantastic Negrito’s West Oakland studio, in 2020, just before lockdown, recording a song in which the two vocalists mesh back and forth throughout the track. ‘Undefeated Eyes’tells a story of misplaced trust and takes a deep dive into the sometimes low points of relationships.
Fantastic Negrito explains, “I was heading for a divorce, then I connected with Sting and recorded this song. There is enough chaos hate pain, destruction, infidelity, and fame whoring in the world. I always strive to not be a part of that”.
A larger than life character, Fantastic Negrito’s own story is stranger than fiction. He first released an album in 1996, but a near fatal car crash in 1999 effectively ended the first chapter of his career. It resulted in him spending three weeks in a coma and initially losing almost all movement in his right hand, drastically limiting his ability to play guitar. Effectively reborn under his new artist identity of Fantastic Negrito, his career got underway when his phenomenal, charismatic performance won NPR Music’s prestigious Tiny Desk Concert Contest.
All three of Fantastic Negrito’s previous studio albums have won the GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Blues album: The Last Days of Oakland, Please Don’t Be Dead and Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?. He has toured with artists as varied as Sturgill Simpson and Chris Cornell, collaborated with Sting and E-40, launched his own Storefront Records label, and founded the Revolution Plantation, an urban farm aimed at youth education and empowerment.
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