Their blend of classic golden age rap and r&b feels perfectly tailored for my taste so maybe I’m not super objective about it but to me this sounds genuinely incredible. Their previous collaborations were already good but this is more refined. The production is elegant and expansive and Paak lets it shine by picking his spots perfectly.
I believe it takes a good artisan to make something in the style of somebody else and get very close to it, but it takes a great one to go beyond that and turn all your influences into something new and fresh.
Kaytranada seems to be able to pull ideas and inspiration from about every corner of the last 50 years of r&b and still push it way forward into the future.
this album feels like a more cohesive and atmospheric trip rather than a collection of outtakes and unused bits from Mike Dean's superstar collaborations. Sonically rich with amazing classic analog synth tones, hypnotic vocoder lines and heavily effected saxophone riffs.
I've been bumping into John Tejada's music since forever. The first time was maybe 20 years ago when I visited the local dj only record store in my hometown, I was buying IDM, illbient and weird beats cds, everybody else was tracking the latest club music, and Tejada had been suggested to me by the owner, something about his synth sounds was resonating with me, it felt like elegant stuff compared to other stuff they were blasting.
But now it's the time I finally and properly get into his music, and this collaboration with Reggie Watts out on Brainfeeder is the perfect jumping point for me.
The grooves are extremely cool, the bass synth deep and punchy, the songs catchy… More