Photo by Giano Currie
Audio By Carbonatix
When Twelve’len talks about Solace in the Night, he’s careful to correct one assumption right away. This isn’t his long-awaited second studio album. It’s something quieter, more intimate, and in many ways more revealing.
We’re sitting inside Velvet Velour in Wynwood, the creative space he built as both refuge and infrastructure, when the conversation begins to circle back to intention. At one point, he pauses and reframes the project entirely. “A few things changed when it came to this project,” he explains. “Around that time, I was supposed to be releasing my official second studio album. This isn’t that. This became a selection.”
That distinction matters. Solace in the Night is not a grand statement meant to define the next era. It’s a carefully curated body of music pulled from a very specific emotional and domestic reality. The real album, he says, is already on the way. It will be titled Dear Love. But Solace in the Night had its own purpose, one rooted less in career momentum and more in survival, patience, and care.
The album’s foundation is jazz-inspired, but not in the way the term is often reduced to aesthetic shorthand. For Twelve’len, jazz is memory and function. It’s the sound of his grandfather driving him to school. It’s also the sound that calms his five-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, during the most difficult hours of the night.
“My son doesn’t sleep easily,” Twelve’len says. “There were nights I’d be up at 2:30 in the morning, driving around the block, playing music, letting the ambience and the bass just sit. That became therapy for him.”
Those nights shaped the album more than any playlist or studio reference ever could. The production across Solace in the Night was selected with intention, not trend. Bass frequencies. Piano tones. Vibrations that soothe rather than stimulate. Sounds that feel warm, repetitive, and grounding. He doesn’t hedge his words when describing the process.
“I didn’t kind of pick it that way,” he says. “I did.”
That decision explains why the album feels less like a traditional release and more like an environment. Live basslines carry the project from track to track. Pianos move freely, often busier than expected, weaving in and out like a living thing. Much of the instrumentation was played live, resisting the rigidity of gridlocked production. Even when the music grows more aggressive, the low end remains human, loose, and breathing.
That sonic warmth extends into the features, which form one of the album’s most striking throughlines. Solace in the Night unintentionally became a West Coast-leaning record, not by design, but by connection.
“I didn’t plan to have all these West Coast artists on this project,” Twelve’len says. “It just kind of fell that way.”
The album includes appearances from 03 Greedo, DRAM, Icecold Bishop, Fabo, Guapdad 4000, and others, with Greedo and DRAM standing out as particularly meaningful inclusions. Greedo’s presence carries weight not just because of his influence, but because of the timing. After years of incarceration, his return represents resilience and unfinished chapters. For Twelve’len, who grew up listening to Greedo, having him on the album felt full circle.
DRAM’s feature lands with a different kind of gravity. “One of my favorite male vocalists,” Twelve’len says without hesitation. “Especially in R&B right now.” Having DRAM on the record wasn’t just collaboration; it was admiration realized.
Denzel Curry also appears, not as a guest star, but as family. Their relationship predates industry recognition, rooted in Miami’s pre-streaming era creative ecosystem. Alongside Denzel, the album’s only other South Florida representation comes from Seafoam Walls, the Miami-based band with deep Haitian roots. While not a fully Haitian collective, Seafoam Walls’ presence carries cultural resonance for Twelve’len, who describes their inclusion as an intentional nod to home.
“It was a cool little touch,” he says. “To represent South Florida and Miami with me and Denzel.”
That balance, between the West Coast’s gravitational pull and Miami’s spiritual anchor, mirrors Twelve’len’s own position in 2025. His ties on the East Coast may be heavier historically, but creatively, this chapter leaned west. Not strategically. Not consciously. Just honestly.
The honesty runs deeper than geography. Solace in the Night exists because Twelve’len learned the difference between being creative and being intentional. Earlier in his career, creativity alone carried him far. But it also attracted an audience he didn’t always recognize himself in. Spiritual language without grounding. Aesthetic without alignment. At some point, he stopped releasing altogether, choosing instead to figure out who he was before asking people to listen again.
That pause reshaped everything. During the pandemic years, he pivoted into visual work, curation, branding, and strategy, helping other artists build worlds while quietly learning how to better build his own. Velvet Velour emerged from that era, not just as a studio, but as a response to Miami’s disappearing venues and shrinking creative infrastructure. If the city kept losing rooms, Twelve’len would build one. If that room disappeared, he’d build another.
Fatherhood sharpened that instinct. His son is present in the studio, present in the process, present in the sound itself. Creativity and care are no longer separate lanes. They are on the same road.
That’s why Solace in the Night feels less like a milestone and more like a necessity. It is music designed to hold space, to calm, to exist without urgency. It is not chasing the bag, the algorithm, or the moment. It is chasing equilibrium.
The official second studio album, Dear Love, is coming. That record, Twelve’len hints, will carry a different weight, a broader scope, and a more declarative voice. But Solace in the Night didn’t need to be that. It needed to be exactly what it is.
