Living Colour has begun working on new music, according to guitarist Vernon Reid in an interview with Lipps Service With Scott Lipps. Reid said he and vocalist Corey Glover are working on a new song and are keeping an open mind about where things will go. Reid added that the song will be political in nature.
"Corey and I started working on a song. We'll see where that goes."
"We're processing what exactly this period… 'Cause a lot of folks, their immediate reaction, a lot of [musicians] are [writing songs about] George Floyd-type things. We're really looking at absorbing it, because I don't wanna just do a George Floyd hook. That situation was so traumatizing, and we wanna think that the world was shifted. And the world gets traumas every now and again.
"The murder of Martin Luther King was traumatizing. And eventually you get something like 'Pride (In The Name Of Love)'; it's a beautiful song. But the underlying issue and underlying problem never seems to go away. And it's the not-going-awayness of it that's what I would wanna talk about."
Reid further explained where the band plans to go lyrically.
"There's something this litany of names, the constant litany of names. Whose will the next name be is what concerns me as opposed to being stuck on a particular victim. Even though what happened to George Floyd was particularly egregious, there's another part of the phenomenon that is where the Breonnas and the Ahmauds — and the names keep going.
"Lately, there was a victim; his name's Winston Smith. And it strikes me very strongly, because Winston Smith is [also the name of] a protagonist of George Orwell's 1984; And it's those kinds of things that are what Living Colour are gonna go; those are the kind of places we're gonna go."
