Draft:Wild Furry Pawtality

This is the official album cover for Wild Furry Pawtality, created and designed by Derek Huerta.

Wild Furry Pawtality is the secondary studio album by singer/songwriter Edwinonus. It was released on October 17, 2023. Inspired by the culture of the furry fandom and the beauty of anthropomorphism, this album has ten songs with ten features and lasts for a half-hour long including appearances from Playboi Carti, The Weeknd, Childish Gambino, and the norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. After his 2021 debut of his first studio album Nine Lives, he felt inspired to create a second project under the Edwinonus stage name and was originally titled as Felidae FM. He was also inspired by the influences of The Weeknd's 2013 debut studio album Kiss Land and Doja Cat's 2023 Scarlet. The album has a mixture of genres including R&B, hip-hop, alternative, electronica, pop, and somewhat goth punk.

Wild Furry Pawtality has two lead singles supporting the album itself: "Outcast" featuring Pepper Coyote and Shakira, and "Wolfin'" featuring Playboi Carti, in which it reached number two and taken the number one spot on the Billboard 200 in less than 5 hours at the time of Edwinonus's hiatus return. Succeeding Ken Carson's single "Jennifer's Body" at number one and then two off his new album "A Great Chaos" that coexisted in the same timeline as Wild Furry Pawtality.

Background

Shortly after six months when Edwinonus first debuted with his release of his 2021 studio album Nine Lives, Huerta was inspired to make another project that was supposed to be a follow-up for Nine Lives. This project however, was supposed to be an all canine radio station-like album titled Dog FM, in contrast to his last feline-inspired project. Later on April 2022, Huerta thought again that Dog FM wouldn't necessarily suit up for him since the project is all canine-inspired and that he thinks it would be "disloyal" for him to start off an era like that because he had a special interest with cats and tigers since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So while inspired by The Weeknd's 2022 studio album Dawn FM and cats, the project was reworked on and was titled to Felidae FM instead.

Felidae FM was originally supposed to be the secondary follow-up project to Nine Lives since Nine Lives and Felidae FM are two different eras from each other but otherwise interconnected because they're both feline-inspired albums. The idea was is that, this project was about the feline purgatory afterlife response shortly after in-universe character Eddie used up all of his lives in Nine Lives, but the project was halted due to writing block and lost tracking of ideal mannerisms, this album was turned down later by the fall of 2022. The project had features including Christopher Walken, Childish Gambino, Thundercat, and with special appearances by Joe Exotic, but Christopher Walken eventually didn't work out for Felidae FM because he wasn't really interested in doing lead-up role narration throughout the album, so that was eventually turned out as well as the casting. Felidae FM was supposed to be released by the same date as when Nine Lives was first released on August 8th, 2022, but the idea for the project didn't stick around long enough. So back then, Huerta thought that his musical career would be nothing left for the Edwinonus stage name because Felidae FM was turned out and there wasn't anymore ideas for another project at that time.

Huerta then went back to being interested in cats and the furry fandom other than being interested to a musical career as Edwinonus in Spring and Summer 2023. Then on August 13, 2023, Huerta posted a screenshot of his anonymous direct message about his struggle in interest about the furry fandom submitted by another furry account on Twitter without credit and later that night Huerta posted a photo of a fursuit praising it's paws up in the air with the caption "to the sight of fur".

And from then on, shortly after Huerta posted the photo that same night, he went on a two-month social media hiatus and unexpectedly ghosting off of his fans for a long period of time. During the hiatus, Huerta was inspired by the culture of anthropomorphism and the furry fandom along with influences by Doja Cat and The Weeknd and said that this entire time during his disappearance he worked on a furry-inspired yiffed-up album along with features, quoted "I was going through a tough time in my life, I was feeling like there was nobody else but me, myself, and I. Just being unique as a creature myself. I was dreaming of a whole anthro-like world. It's so different from Nine Lives. Nine Lives was very feline-inspired. Wild Furry Pawtality helped me find who I really am." The production and development of the project was only written and drawn on paper because Edwinonus said in a interview that he didn't use a phone back then and that his school computer was the only source to produce Wild Furry Pawtality entirely at that time being. Then after the hiatus, Huerta returned to Instagram as Edwinonus himself along with a new tiger fursona alter ego moniker introduced as Theo Strypetail on October 14, 2023 with his first post captioned "my fursona is not your problem" and later that night Edwinonus released a new lead single off of his new album titled "Outcast" with Pepper Coyote and Shakira in which both artists sang and wrote the song along with Edwinonus himself respectively.

The next two days after his return, Edwinonus announced that his next new album is titled Wild Furry Pawtality and it releases on October 17, 2023. Later on, he released the official tracklist for Wild Furry Pawtality the night before the album was released. Then on October 17, 2023, Wild Furry Pawtality was released exclusively on Apple Music for the first three hours of it's release before later on it's available on all platforms everywhere on that same day.

Tour

By the end of week from the success of his new album's release on October 21st, 2023, Edwinonus announced that he's performing a nationwide furry convention tour alongside with special guests Pepper Coyote and Ylvis to promote Wild Furry Pawtality and Nine Lives respectfully known as the Pawtality Tour and the touring officially begins as of January 2024 and ends on November 2024, although more conventions might be added in the future.

Imagery

During the hiatus, Edwinonus created and explored the concept and the planning of Wild Furry Pawtality and said that "he was going through a tough time in his life" and how much the animalistic nature of the furry fandom meant so much to him despite not having enough social skills. So he expressed the true nature of anthropomorphism and infatuation of wild but humane animals through music and writing as well as creating a self alter-ego character known as Theo Strypetail, who is a bengal tiger based off Huerta's interest in tigers. Edwinonus gained a new haircut and aesthetic throughout his social medias and was inspired by The Weeknd's past records and music from Doja Cat and other furry drama culture in media such as the BLFC Hallway Pizza 2021, in which there's many reappearances of pizza slices throughout promotions of Wild Furry Pawtality. The pizza slices also appeared in two of Edwinonus's first music videos of Wild Furry Pawtality: "Outcast" and "Wolfin'".

Artwork

On October 15, 2023, Edwinonus posted a new photo via Instagram showcasing the official album cover artwork for Wild Furry Pawtality, featuring a fursona in a neon deep purple-pink shadow along with cyans and yellow greens with two white paw prints behind the fursona, one flipped upside down, with some of the pads from the paw prints overlaying parts of the fursona's face and the album title "Wild Furry Pawtality" on the top left corner and the artist's stage name on the bottom right corner all on a black background. The upside down paw print is used to symbolize the unusual side of the furry fandom, according to Edwinonus. This was also used along with promotions for the album as well as merchandise. The album cover gives homage and similarity to Pepper Coyote's 2017 debut studio album, which also has a fursona in the cover. The album cover is designed by Derek Huerta himself and this is the first album of Edwinonus's music discography that Derek himself is not directly featured in the album cover unlike Nine Lives, which Huerta himself appeared in the cover. He said that this is his second chapter of his musical career and wanted to do something different by making his discography stand out by making a different cover each project rather than having Huerta himself reappear in the covers. This was to make his mostly-known passion of animals show off as Huerta himself says that animals were always his biggest inspiration to his music and artistic works.

Inspiration

Wild Furry Pawtality was mostly inspired by the anime/manga series Beastars, which are anthropomorphic animals living and divided between carnivores and herbivores, and with the ethereal, animalistic Japanese aesthetics and sounds of The Weeknd's 2013 Kiss Land.