With the recent events of Kendrick Lamar’s “How to Pimp a Butterfly” setting a world record for most online plays in one day, and the controversy behind the radical experimental turn Kendrick took with his latest installments, as I was listening to the new album I could not escape the thought that I have in fact heard a familiar sound before, such delicate mix of pure soul music and Neo Soul and Hip Hop with funk instrumentals and a sound that cannot be explained but only experienced. It took me a few days of going back and forward between playlists and mixes looking for that sound, thinking what mixtape have I listen to before that prepared my mind for HTPAB. It was when I found it on a mixtape a friend sent me via Youtube a couple months ago.
Yasiin Gaye could be described as the collaboration that never could, digging between the lost instrumental and sample files from the legend Mr. Marvin Gaye himself Amerigo Gazaway manage to break down the perfect formula to accommodate such soulful sounds to the also legendary rhymes of Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) to produce “The Departure” and “The Return” for his series of mixtape called ‘SoulMates’. On this series, we get to experience the ifs. What if Motown had a chance to meet Brooklyn’s finest rappers. What kind of gender breaking experiments could have they all done together if they united powers and their talents. This is it.
So if Kendrick’s album left you with a hunger for more experimental and meaningful hip hop, look no further there are more options out there and this is one that deserves a loop.
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