With Black Shaman, veteran spoken-word artist Marc Marcel turned decades of creative exploration into the first Grammy nomination of his career.
NEW YORK — For Marc Marcel, Black Shaman represents considerably more than another album.
Released August 26, 2025, the 11-track, 65-minute project became Marcel’s 21st spoken-word studio production—and ultimately carried the veteran poet to the Grammy Awards. (Apple Music – Web Player)
The Recording Academy nominated Black Shaman for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, giving Marcel the first Grammy nomination of his career. (Grammy)
It placed Marcel alongside Queen Sheba, Omari Hardwick and Anthony Hamilton, Saul Williams and Carlos Niño & Friends, and eventual category winner Mad Skillz. (Grammy)
For an artist whose catalog stretches across decades, the recognition represented a significant new chapter.
Inside Black Shaman
The album is built around spoken-word poetry accompanied by music, with subject matter that moves deliberately into philosophical and metaphysical territory.
According to the project’s official Grammy materials, Black Shaman was inspired by themes of healing trauma, metaphysical ascension and reincarnation. The credited artists are Marc Marcel, Scooby Trillion and Septimius the Great, while production credits list Marcel, Scooby Trillion and The Intangible. (Cosmidelic)
The complete album contains 11 pieces: “No More Gurus,” “Through Lifetimes,” “Alone,” “You,” “The Poet,” “Psychedelic Doug,” “Here We Go Again,” “Vibe,” “God’s Poem,” “Follow the Mushroom” and “Burn.” (Spotify)
Those titles provide a window into Marcel’s creative territory.
This isn’t conventional pop songwriting disguised as spoken word. Black Shaman sits within a body of work Marcel has spent years constructing around consciousness, spirituality, human existence and questions that often resist simple answers.
A Career Built Outside the Conventional Lane
Marcel’s Grammy recognition becomes more significant when viewed against the scale of the work that preceded it.
His official discography identifies Black Shaman as his 21st spoken-word studio production. Earlier releases include The God I Used to Be, The Last Road Out of Babylon, 25,000 Light Years Away from the Sun and his sprawling 2024 album The Greatest Poet Rock Star Spoken Word Artist That Ever Lived in the History of All Space and Time Throughout the Galaxies in the Universe Under God the Creator the Almighty Knowing Uncaused Cause Beyond Infinity and Forever to the End of an Era. (Marc Marcel Grammy Nominated Artist)
His interests have extended beyond recording as well.
Marcel’s official biography identifies him as a Baltimore-born spoken-word artist who was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 10 and later developed a career performing around the world. His work increasingly incorporated metaphysical themes, while his creative output expanded into writing and animation. He is the author of The Book That Doesn’t Even Matter and creator and animator of Gurus, a satirical series centered on historical philosophers. (Marc Marcel Grammy Nominated Artist)
That history makes the Grammy nomination less an overnight breakthrough than institutional recognition arriving after a long independent body of work.
“The Poet”
One track in particular offers insight into Marcel’s approach.
Official materials for Black Shaman explain that “The Poet” originated after a conversation with a friend who had not known Marcel created music. That exchange inspired its opening concept, after which the piece developed into an exploration of Marcel imagining himself through the lives and identities of major artists throughout history. (Cosmidelic)
It is an ambitious idea, but ambition has rarely been absent from Marcel’s work.
Even his album titles suggest an artist comfortable working on a large conceptual canvas. Spirituality, identity, existence, psychedelia and artistic purpose recur throughout his catalog.
Black Shaman brought those instincts together in a project the Recording Academy ultimately placed among the five nominees in its spoken-word poetry category. (Grammy)
Spoken Word on Music’s Biggest Stage
The nomination also speaks to the increasingly visible place occupied by spoken-word poetry within contemporary recorded culture.
The Recording Academy describes the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category as recognizing albums built around oral poetic performance, including the performer’s cadence, vocal inflection, intonation and musicality. (Grammy)
Black Shaman competed within exactly that intersection of language, voice and music.
Although Mad Skillz ultimately won the Grammy for Words For Days Vol. 1, Marcel left the 68th Grammy Awards as a first-time Recording Academy nominee. (Grammy)
That distinction is permanent.
The Black Shaman Strikes Back
There is something fitting about Black Shaman becoming the project that elevated Marcel to a different level of industry recognition.
After 20 previous spoken-word studio productions, it was album number 21 that reached the Grammys.
And rather than abandoning the subjects that have defined his work in pursuit of something more conventional, Marcel arrived there by leaning further into them: consciousness, spirituality, trauma, reincarnation, poetry and the metaphysical.
For an independent artist who has spent years building his own creative vocabulary, that may be the larger story behind Black Shaman.
The Grammy nomination did not create Marc Marcel.
It introduced a much larger audience to an artist who had already spent decades creating.
