MonoNeon's Deep-Funk Quilt: The Memphis Bass Genius Made One of 2026's Strangest, Warmest Records

Somewhere between the microtones, the neon durags and the bass runs that seem to defy the laws of Western tuning, it's easy to forget that MonoNeon is one of us — a Memphian, born Dywane Thomas Jr., raised on the same church-and-soul diet that built this city's sound. So while the rest of the internet files him under "that guy who plays impossible bass," let the record show 901 Sound claims him first.

His January 2 release, This Dirt Loves Me More Than You, is the reason we're still thinking about it in July. Self-produced and dropped across Bandcamp, Apple Music and the usual platforms, it's a nine-track statement the press materials rightly called "a personal statement quilted in deep funk." That quilt image is doing real work. This is not a bass-solo showcase; it's Southern soul, hymn fragments and MonoNeon's signature microtonal funk stitched into something about family, faith and where you come from.

The most Memphis thing on it isn't a lick — it's the family. As on his earlier Crusty Neon Missionary Baptist Church, MonoNeon pulls his mother and grandmother into the room. Grandma Liz appears again, most strikingly on "Human," a track built around the two of them "exploring vulnerability in a microtonal universe," per the album's notes. It's the sound of a virtuoso who could impress anyone deciding instead to make music with the people who raised him. Even the track titles — from the gleefully crude "Everybody Shiet Stank… Mines Too!" to the closing benediction "Better Days Are Coming" — swing between the sacred and the profane the way this city always has.

That range is the point. MonoNeon came up posting fearless bass videos, toured in Prince's final band, and has since released music at a pace that borders on the compulsive. Plenty of players with a fraction of his chops chase the clean session-ace career. He went the other way — weirder, funkier, more personal — and somehow that's made him one of the most quietly influential exports Memphis has going right now.

What makes This Dirt Loves Me More Than You land, though, isn't the résumé; it's the warmth. Records built around instrumental brilliance usually keep you at arm's length, admiring the technique. This one pulls you onto the porch. The microtonality that reads as "difficult" on paper functions here as tenderness — those bent, in-between notes are how the human voice actually sounds when it's grieving or praising, and MonoNeon knows it. He's using the most advanced tools in his kit to get at the oldest feelings in the book.

As of this writing we couldn't confirm a hometown release show to match — check the artist's own channels for the latest. But an album doesn't need a marquee to matter. Half the great Memphis records were made by people the rest of the world took years to catch up to.

So consider this your nudge. Put the record on — loud, or on good headphones, the microtones deserve it — and sit with the fact that one of the most adventurous musicians working today learned to feel music in a Memphis church, at a Memphis dinner table, and never once pretended otherwise. This dirt loves him back.

Sources: MonoNeon Releases "This Dirt Loves Me More Than You"; MonoNeon Gets His Quilt On — Memphis Flyer; MonoNeon — Wikipedia