AMAL

D.C.’s usually seen as a city full of marble statues and former class president types, but Amal Handley, born and bred in Silver Spring, rides fast and plays loose alongside the colder and more uptight in his town. With a little bit of the freewheeling, house-hopping, genre-freaking DNA of the DC mainstay Beautiful Swimmers, a sexy, liquid voice like Rhode Island’s Galcher Lustwerk, plus a squeeze of Myrtle Avenue’s jacking AceMo and MoMa Ready, Amal’s first EP, DANCE CONCEPT, is a petri dish of sounds collected up and down the coast, centered right at home in the nation’s capital. Growing up in Silver Spring, Amal’s initial foray into music lived with the local hip-hop scene. Across the past decade, he’s produced tracks for local rappers that include WIFIGAWD, THE KHAN, Nappy Nappa, Warhol.SS, Black Kray – and that influence shows.