Review: Big Crown is one of our favourite labels here at HQ. The funk and soul they serve up is perfectly aged yet never overly nostalgic and this new one is another case it point. It's the latest from the Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band and features two singles take from their latest and greatest album Expansions which landed back in June. As always they bring their own unique steel drum sounds and tropical Caribbean vibes to funk music. 'Raise It Up' is a deep cut joint with big horns and rippling steel drums puddles while 'Space' is a more lumpy groove with the drums more front and centre.
Review: Athens of the North has got a couple of belters landing this month (to be honest, when do they ever serve up anything else?). The sone is a modern soul delight by Mark Beiner and his co-writer Ben Iverson, and the subject is Beiner's ex-girlfriend. It is a superb floater that carries you up above the dance floor with its lush horns and crooning vocals, while the flipside is much more raw. 'Crack (instrumental)' is a proto-hip hop beat with early electro stylings and some old school rap bars to add even more flavour. Two very different but equally great jams.
Review: Mash up crew unite! This new and limited 7" from Alloy Cuts is pure bait for those who like to pack a dancefloor with classic hip-hop sounds all mixed and mashed up. Slick Rick's 'Children's Story' provides the hoping bass and drums here while Kelis's most iconic refrain sits up top next to see other rude raps. That's on opener 'I've Got Your Montel' while the flipside features more from Kelis as well as myriad other classics with a fat demob rhythm down below. Madness.
Review: Cinematic soul legend El Michels Affair has written a superb album Glorious Game which is due for release later in spring. Before that full-length with Roots co-founder and lyricist Black Thought - which is a meditation on the state of the hip-hop scene in the early 2020s - we get this taster single from it. 'Glorious Game' as you would expect as all the lush instrumentation and dark soul sounds you'd expect from this artist by now with the added extra of some superbly thought-provoking mic work. 'Grateful' is another heart-wrenching and alluring sound that more than gets us excited for the full length.
Review: The inaugural reals on Word To The Wise from Mah'Mood sold out in quick time. It was a super way to kick off the label and now the second EP six or so months later is just as good. It's a deep house exploration from Sebastiao Loopes that opens with a languid groove and some freeform synth work. The energy is pent up and the bass bulbous. The grocers cut from from easy characterisation after that with the downbeat and stonier sounds of 'Clouds' and lurching beat structures of 'Dancehall Private Party' before closer 'Strictly Bouncin' rounds out on a lazy and swaggering groove that slowly lifts you off your feet.
Review: Street soul is one of the many short lived but vital in between genres that have emerged from the studios of the UK over the decades. Pause was an early act who excelled at the form as two incredibly rare and hard to find tunes that are both being pressed up bony Freestyle this month prove. The first one comes on this 12" in the form of 'It's Just Amazing' with various different mixes. The vocal mix pairs lo-fi drum breaks with shards of 80s synth stabs and a gorgeous vocal harmony finished perfectly by a melancholic bassline. The two instrumental mixes are even more dusty and lo-fi but the vocal version is the one that will always stand out and get the floor in a tizzy.
Review: After offering up EPs titled "Hard Times" and "Changing Times" in 2017, Kaidi Tatham returns to First Word to complete the trilogy with "Serious Times". Of course, the music contained within the EP's tightly packed grooves is as joyous, rich as intricate as ever. Check, for example, "Don't Cry Now", a samba-soaked, sun-kissed affair that wraps harmonic freestyle vocals, twinkling electric piano lines and darting jazz-funk bass around a seriously shuffling groove. Tatham's much-discussed jazz-funk influences are once again given an airing on "Sugar", while his fine piano work takes pride of place on instrumental hip-hop head-nodder "Zallom". Best of all, though, is opener "Cost of Living", which emphatically weaves together all of these strands and more besides.
Review: Alongside De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Dr Dre's solo debut album, The Chronic, is one of the few hip-hop sets that genuinely changed the genre in the months and years after it was released. Three decades on from its original release, it has lost none of its allure - as this celebratory reissue proves. Built on distinctive 'G-funk' beats that heavily reference his hero, George Clinton, a wealth of killer samples, and raps from the cream of the then West Coast scene (his old pal Snoop Dogg is the most prominent voice throughout), it's a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant excursion that's every bit as essential now as it was back in 1993.
I Swear It's A Bop (feat KAYY & ALLGIRLSALLOWED) (2:17)
Fitness By King Milo (2:07)
Review: The spirit of ghetto tech looms large over this full length offering from duo Hi Tech, surfacing on Omar S' FXHE label. That said, the usual straight forward pumped up booty bouncing beats that the genre flaunts are left well behind by an eclectic and well constructed trip across the rhythmic spectrum. 'Milf Milo' is one of the more regular sounding jams, riding a relatively conventional house/garage production, but elsewhere elements of trap, hip-hop, techno, footwork and electro all influence the genuinely innovative and original frameworks. Even better, the cleverness of the arrangements doesn't lessen the alarmingly thuggish timestretched and over-autotuned vocals, giving us the best of both worlds.
Glitch N Ass (feat Cheapskate Skutta, Dastardly Kids)
Birthday Pearls (feat QuikKash)
Pocket Pussy (feat Milfie)
TakeOffOnnaPorsche
TeeTees Dispo (feat Sprng4evr)
No Games (feat Nlghind, Dastardly Kids)
Track 13
Track 14
Track 15
Track 16
Track 17
Track 18
Review: After its initial release on vinyl on Omar S's FXHE last summer, Diners Club International have put together a new CD version of Hi Tech's Dttwat album featuring some new bonus cuts. It's a stylish blend of Motor City beats, ghetto energy and r&b vocals that all get cut up and chopped and spliced into short, quickfire but potent tunes that make a lasting impact. A wide range of guest vocals come from Cheapskate Skutta, Dastardly Kids, Nlghind and many more so these beats brim with colour and character. With the added bonus cuts this is a must-cop CD direct from the D.
Review: This is a new CD version including bonus tracks of Hi Tech's self-titled album which comes here on Diners Club International but first landed on Omar S's FXHE. It is a full ghetto tech workout with pumped-up booty-bouncing beats that traverse a wide range of tempos. The high energy highlights come thick and fast with the likes of 'Big Prism' riding on juke beats, 'Milf Milo' bringing some lithe synth chords and raw claps and 'I Swear It's A Bop' (feat KAYY & ALLGIRLSALLOWED) featuring broken drum patterns, glistening synth stabs and r&b vocals full of soul.
Review: While punk imprint-turned-electro and bass outfit Bunker Records specialises in 'dark electronic music for mutants' (as they put it), the Den Haag-based imprint is not averse to offering up oddball excursions and releases that are formidably hard to pigeonhole. We perhaps shouldn't be too surprised, then, to find them offering up a first label outing from Lunatika, a trap and drill rapper from the Hague whose Split Second Origins Part 1 LP is restlessly brilliant and impossible to describe. His raps - sometimes doused in auto-tune - are a constant, as is a lo-fi sound that pushes booming basslines and lo-fi beats to the fore. Bolted onto this framework are nods to mutant hip-hop, chopped and screwed R&B, dub, UK bass and his beloved drill and trap.
Review: While working on The Age of Pleasure, her first album for five years, Janelle Monae frequently played rough cuts of the tracks at parties, choosing to dispense with any that didn't rock the dancefloor. As a result, the album is tons of fun from start to finish, with Monae's lyrics exploring "all the things that give me pleasure" atop music that giddily blurs boundaries in pursuit of genuine good times. 'Float', featuring mighty horns from Afrobeat combo Seun Kuti and Egypt 80, sets the tone, blurring the boundaries between hip-hop, reggae and modern soul, while 'Lipstick Lover' delivers another low-lung reggae/r&b fusion from the top drawer. Throw in guest spots from Grace Jones, Sister Nancy, CK, Amarea and Nia Long, and you have a vibrant and entertaining set that won't leave your headphones all summer long.
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