EL MICHELS AFFAIR & BLACK THOUGHT
Glorious Game (Big Crown)
The Roots’ Black Thought has been busy of late, following up last year’s album with Danger Mouse with Glorious Game – aneven better collaboration with Leon Michels, aka El Michels Affair. Samples from Michels’ soul and funk record collection are woven in with chop-ups and loops of the cinematic soul his band composed in the studio; supple basslines, soulful guitar and tight natural beats form a smoky haze, with crackly samples for Black Thought to wrap his chops around.
The likes of I Would Never are seductive, and I’m Still Somehow is a bubbling stream of consciousness (“I will be three sheets to the wind, then I’ll repeat dumb shit again … we’re too powerful for you to dance to, too powerful for you to cancel”). Protocol is some banger, as funky as Common or Mos Def, and the clipped beats, throbbing bass and swirling samples of That Girl see Nefertiti compared to a love who will tear you apart. Closer Alter Ego has the rapper rhyming about acting his age, approaching half a century – but this album is evidence that there’s loads left in the tank.
words CHRIS SEAL