Artists You Should Know: Sam Truth Embodies a Captivating Flux of Genres On New Album ‘Stray Dog Heaven’

Sam Truth is a singer/songwriter and producer who makes music to both cope and elicit hope from life’s crushing lows. Always on the move, never settling for anything less than searing veracity, he embodies a captivating flux of genres. Occupying this mercurial space where buoyant pop textures and hook-filled beats mingle breezily with earnestly rapped confessionals.

Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, Truth’s pathway to music sprang from exigent necessity as opposed to just a lounging passion. At 18 years old, he found himself without a home — forcing him into a life of houselessness and couch-surfing. Eventually, he found his way to Richmond and caught a break on his brother’s couch. It was there that Sam Truth was conceived.

Two years later, he’d completed his debut album Child, an absorbing recollection and confrontation with the heartbreak and depression that seemed to hang over him perpetually. The record’s standout track “All My Dogs,” unfolds as a poignant manifesto where pain and hopelessness are alleviated by the delicate reassurances of his bars — not to mention its urgently uplifting exchange of riffs and drums.

Elsewhere on the album, he compresses a search for companionship and the oppressive possibility of a fatal encounter with the police between the alluring beats that ramble from “Sunny.” Tracks like “More Often” and “Child(ready2grow)” find him wrangling valiantly but with eviscerating clarity with the person he still sees in the mirror and all the while syncing his heart-on-the-sleeve lyricism to an ever-changing array of melodic backdrops, from those that echo his pensiveness to the stirringly funky.

For his sophomore album Stray Dog Heaven, Truth hones in on many of the same themes that encompassed his first album. But this time he operates from a different space both mentally and sonically. Now a sonic elation encompasses his tenacious honesty — it’s two opening tracks “Breakdown” and “DAT WORD,” landing like a one-two punch of rousing grooves.

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But he switches things up on “Lightspeed,” the last single to come before the LP’s release. Funneling his soberingly heartfelt thoughts through a simmering ballad where glowing keys and swelling strings add an emotive immensity to his loving words. The track also comes with a gorgeous music video that shows the artist performing the song surrounded by an array of breathtaking desert vistas and luminous neon nighttime shots.

Words: Steven Ward

Visit Sam Truth on his Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.