Rhythms, Jazz and Politics has been my go to instrumental beat-tape since John Robinson dropped it on us back in August. Once upon a time Robinson was best known under his alias Lil’ Sci, as an emcee for Scienz Of Life. For the last decade or so though as a solo emcee and frequent collaborator his name’s been an underground staple.
Robinson’s I Am Not For Sale EPs (featuring producers like Jneiro Jarel, Flying Lotus and J. Rawls) and Who Is This Man? LP (produced by Doom) recently appeared in early episodes of All My Records: taking me back to a brief period where he sounded like the only fresh voice in hip-hop.
The truth is that his production game is equally strong. Rhythms… is a full-length beat tape drawing on jazz samples from the “spiritual era of the 1970’s” to paint a picture still relevant today. A sonically original instrumental journey of top-shelf production with message tied to it’s movements, this is a record digger’s listen.
If you think you’re over “jazz meets hip-hop” you haven’t dug far enough. Jazz is a broad term. The records I like are often as heavy as they are playful, weighted in subtleties and space, personal, humble, emotive and uniting. Robinson achieves this in a way that very few instrumental releases have managed of late.
Straying away from obvious uses of samples, the ability to deconstruct a track and reinvent it while keeping it’s original feeling in tact is something that separates the generic sounding from the classics. Rhythms… is straight classic. It’s beats that make you feel good no matter what, that we love and miss, and you can’t help but be drawn to comparisons of the work on Midnight Marauders.
Twenty minutes a side or thirty-seven all up if you’re streaming it’s one of the most complete offerings we’ve heard all year. Surprisingly there’s still some cassettes left via bandcamp. Get on it quick.