Sudan Archives

Brittney Parks records as Sudan Archives, where she fuses experimental strains of R&B, hip-hop, folk, and electronic music with fiddling techniques drawn from West Africa. The artist has refined this distinctive method across two EPs plus the albums Athena (2019) and Natural Brown Prom Queen (2022), each issued through Stones Throw.

A self-taught violinist, singer, songwriter, and producer, Parks first picked up the instrument during childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her stepfather Derrick Ladd, a onetime music executive who had managed the Deele and served at LaFace Records alongside L.A. Reid and Babyface, briefly groomed Parks and her twin sister for a teen-pop career that never took hold. After relocating to Los Angeles to pursue studies in music technology, she began crafting beats on a tablet computer, layering her own vocals and strings, the latter shaped by deeper exposure to Sudanese traditions.

At a Low End Theory event in her adopted city, Parks encountered A&R/producer Matthewdavid, an introduction that secured her contract with Stones Throw. The label issued her self-titled debut EP in July 2017, followed by the Sink EP ten months afterward. For her debut full-length, she shifted toward collaboration and enlisted producers including Paul White, Rodaidh McDonald, and Wilma Archer. The sessions yielded material sufficient for five albums, yet she distilled the results into the focused yet wide-ranging Athena, which appeared in 2019.

In the ensuing years her releases consisted of individual tracks and remixes. Velvet Negroni and Nidia reworked selections from Athena in 2020, and the following year Parks reimagined the Automatic song “Strange Conversations.” She kept several earlier associates for her second Sudan Archives album while adding Hi-Tek, Nosaj Thing, and MonoNeon. Natural Brown Prom Queen emerged in September 2022.