Producer, Michael Starita (known as Starita) has premiered the video for his song “Rules” featuring hip hop artist Jarobi White of A Tribe Called Quest & singer/songwriter Trent Park, today. The song appears on Starita’s debut album Starita – For The Record, coming out Fall 2017, on the newly formed record label, Arcadia Inclusive Records. Watch and share “Rules” here and buy the song here.

“The track started out as a break-beat Florida Miami kind of sound, then went pop, and then out in left field on the bridge,” explains Starita. “And while ‘Rules’ breaks music conventions, we stuck to the vision of staying humble to music, letting the song breathe and evolve into its own thing. Adding Jarobi’s style on top of all this is entirely different than what fans are used to hearing from him.”

The video for “Rules” delivers on this message of breaking barriers and conventions; featuring creative elements of upside down mirrored imagery, scenes played out in reverse, performances in rooms that are built sideways. This video connects the stories of East and West coast artists – Jarobi White and Trent Park from New York, and Starita from San Francisco (originally a southern boy from Mississippi) as they venture into this genre blending collaboration. To pay homage to Phife Dawg and A Tribe Called Quest, Starita and Jarobi headed to St. Albans in Queens; visiting Malik ‘Phife Dawg’ Taylor Way, ATCQ’s stomping grounds, for the video. Jarobi enjoys taking Starita on the symbolic walk that he took daily with Q-Tip and Phife Dawg as kids. “To be able to witness the duality of both those experiences – the hood (the tougher part) on one side of the neighborhood and the haven for black jazz entertainers (Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Hurricane Carter, Roy Campanella) back in the 1930s on the other – it goes to show you I can really make something of myself,” says Jarobi.

Known for his work as producer and engineer for groups such as A Tribe Called Quest, Childish Gambino, Michael Franti and others, Starita – For the Record speaks to Starita’s can-do spirit, which dares to defy odds and break the “rules” of music genres. You hear it in the songs…an eclectic mix of electronic music and acoustic instruments that, he will argue, does not belie his Southern roots but springs directly from them. And you see it in the featured artists on the album, including hip hop artist Jarobi White of A Tribe Called Quest, rapper Mystikal, and singer/songwriter Trevor Hall, among others, creating a signature stylistic blend that’s hard to categorize.