Footprints:About
Footprints Catalog & Trust is an independent music trust. It is the umbrella for the discography, projects, personas, and monikers of SESAC composer William Lamont Robinson — Muhammad Hasan — who has recorded under his many names since 1994. Footprints was started in 2021 to bring that whole body of work under one catalog.
Operations & Infrastructure
- Publishing: Operates in direct association with Urban Sufi Music, the SESAC-registered publishing entity founded in 2004. The writing catalog — more than 600 published compositions — is managed across three publishing entities, one per performing rights organization: Urban Sufi Music (SESAC), Ghadaqan Music (BMI), and So Amusing (ASCAP).
- Distribution: Partners with FORM for global digital distribution and physical media manufacturing. Releases appear across formats: vinyl, CDs, USB albums, and NFT-authenticated editions bundled with wall art.
- 'Studios & design:’ From album art to music production, recording, mixing, and mastering are handled at ATHARi, a production house of Hasan’s Dissidence USA.
Catalog & Artists
The catalog focuses on independent hip-hop, beat tapes, and electronic/ambient library music — nasheed, post-modern hip-hop, and beat art at its core, with the Traces line covering nu-jazz and jazztronica. Its library music is placed for film, TV, and multimedia use. This wiki documents the catalog as it stands: 70 releases, 750 recordings, and 653 registered works.
Releases and distributed works include projects by:
- Bil Basmala — the "Beat Art" moniker: spiritual Urban Sufi hip-hop built on a dusty aesthetic and soulful, jazz-influenced samples.
- Autolect — downtempo, jazzy hip-hop with thoughtful lyrics; the official debut Every Mans Universe arrived in 2005. The moniker is now retired.
- Usephasan — one of the earliest recording names in the catalog, still active.
- PER Music Library — started in Burbank, California as Preservation Electronic Recordings. Library, theme, and archive music across experimental, hip-hop instrumentals, ambient, minimal, jazztronica, and nu jazz.