@@@ Summer Walker: Toxic (Interscope, 2021) I can’t remember how I got to this track but my first thought is this is Drake with a vajeen. Mad bedroom-y and flowin’ on the microphone. Lust production with chill beats, it’s a pretty standard formula. I wish there was more of an instrumental arrangement to balance out the vocal tracks and the beats. I hear a vibes part tucked way back in the mix. There’s a guest MC who tells a booty story with some delay on selected syllables of his rhymes. He raises the energy and I like that.
@@@ Tony Allen: The Barbarian (PIAS, 2021) This is a British music collaboration that had to have been finished before Tony Allen passed last year. The video below is the opening track of the record and it is Tony Allen’s light touch and funky as fuck. He gets an ambient chill set of sounds layered over the top of the beat and I see why they didn’t put much over the beat and put it super high in the mix cuz it’s bangin’. We get a singer, he’s worked with Tony Allen before. As the tune has reached it’s full development it’s a unique mash — not fully soul, not rock, not Afrobeat just a really nice mash. After the fantastic stick work by Allen I find myself listening a lot to the bass player, he/she is catching my ear. I’ve heard of Joan the Police Womean before but I can’t say I remember hearing them.
Deep In the Music 