Late last night ["early morning"] while many of us were sound asleep, Blu quietly posted a mysterious link to his Twitter handle, @HerFavColor. Turns out that very link lead zealous fans to Blu & Exile's long-awaited, mildly forgotten follow-up to Below The Heavens (2007). give me my flowers while i can smell them was written and recorded soon thereafter, only to be hastily abandoned upon partial completion in 2009 for reasons unknown. With that said, "flowers" is a raw, un-mixed/mastered 15-track album, but since this seems to be a common practice for the man simply known as Blu... fans should expect to see a proper, fully mixed down version of the album up for wholesale within the next few months. Nature Sounds recently re-issued 2 [rough] Blu albums from 2009 in this very fashion: Open and HerFavoriteColo(u)r.

While Blu & Exile have been relatively silent since 2007, they've been far from musically in-active. Exile crafted an album made from old AM/FM Radio samples and Blu released a handful of random recordings across the vast waves of the internet. Although he's been active ever since 1995, 4TRK MIND (2011) marked his proper debut as a rapper; Exile self-recorded the bulk of the album straight to rudimentary 4-track technology. One of Blu's most significant offerings of the year was essentially released in the most un-official manner possible... NoYork! was sold @ Rock The Bells and quickly leaked online. For now, Warner Bros. is imminently withholding the long-rumored Experimental album from wide-spread commercial release. But it has been met with great fan-fare and features members of Sa-Ra, J*DaVeY, Wu-Tang, and Pac Div. Head over to Bandcamp and pick up a copy of Blu & Exile's recently-liberated "flowers" for just about $15.