Nandipha808 & CAAZA: Who Made Who
Not sure why this Few Vocal Album repurposes the title of an old AC/DC soundtrack: perhaps it’s to recognize the difficulty of attribution on South African records with five or six credited artists. Nandipha808 and rookie CAAZA (plus lieutenant Givem Tyler Litch, who gets his name on seven of nine cuts) have nudged mainstream amapiano towards the more cerebral style of DJ Black Low. There’s a sparsity that allows every blorp to have its own impact, and a prevelance of minor keys making innocuous bloops ominous; the donks, as always, hold their own. The title track bends its bass tones upwards in a diabolical manner. Similarly sinister is “Illum KL”, named after Kuala Lumpur’s top Afrodance club that now I want to go to, which repeats a simple keyb hook over a syncopated groove. The more songful “Closer” brings things into chill territory for a bit before the most experimental percussion on “Vio Vio”, which is sneaky-pretty despite or because of a hook that sounds like “Jimmy Jimmy Aaja”. Then for symmetry there’s one where the bass bends upwards before the suave if conventional donker “Void” finishes. One of the better runs in South Afrotronican history rumbles on.
Grade: A (“Vio Vio”, “Illum KL”, “Closer”)
Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’: Room on the Porch (2025)
I like this a lot more than this year’s (Obama era-recorded) Time, as straight blues Taj sounds overfamiliar to me. This is much more Americanan, and the arrangements are fresher, with utility player Keb’ Mo’ bringing his banjo and mandolin as well as a museum quality guitar collection. It’s Taj, of course, who’s the contender for greatest living male singer in English (and occasional French); he’s downhome through the decades from “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” to a John Oates co-write. Keb’ holds his own, often setting up the melody before Taj takes it over the top. I’m not sure which of them does the Wolfman Jack voice on “Junkyard Dog”, but using it to deliver George Clintonisms is canine. The writing on the originals is fine, reveling in affections held for decades and urging the young’uns to get on with it, they may not have decades left. The music, never too laidback even when the steel drums come out, is always warming things up. Most affectionate is the title track, inviting over singer Ruby Amanfu, fiddle ace Jenee Fleenor, and at least one spouse to emphasize their porch music isn’t just country for old men.
Grade: A MINUS (“Room on the Porch”, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”, “Junkyard Dog”)
Mark Lomax, II & the Urban Art Ensemble: The Unity Suite
Drummer-composer Lomax has made big, important records before, the biggest being 2019’s 12-disc 400: An Afrikan Epic, digested for us low attention span types into the great 400 Years Suite. I’m unable to judge the importance of this decades-in-the-making composition (he started work on it after 9/11), as I lack knowledge of the Black church experience Lomax is paying tribute to and critiquing, but it’s plenty of fun. The suite consists of three “meditations”, each with three constrasting tracks. In the first, for instance, “Devotions”, an alto-trumpet-tenor fanfare, is followed by the rollicking “Thank You!”, and then the introspective “Sermonic Selection”. The core Ohio-based band has been playing together a long time, and Lomax has an especially psychic rapport with bassist Dean Hulett, who knows when to pluck harder. Of the horns, tenor Edwin Bayard (another Lomax regular) gets some long, expressive solos on the slower ones. Pianist William Menefield gets “Alter Call” to himself, starting pretty before he goes into Art Tatum classical abstraction. In the top ten jazz of three Midyear Jazzpoll voters; maybe it’s not a coincidence none of us are near a coast.
Grade: A MINUS (“Prayer for Spiritual Unity & Selflessness”, “Thank You!”, “Devotions”)
Jill Scott: To Whom This May Concern
Her first music as lead artist since 2015’s Woman—she’s been busy with guest spots, her TV career, a marriage, and a divorce—and she doesn’t just have a bunch to say, she also has a bunch of sounds she wants to incorporate. So she invites over youngsters like Tierra Whack, whom she and DJ Premier corner into an excellent normal-shaped rap verse, and JID, who brings streams. As for things to say, she pours two husbands and a babydaddy’s worth of experience into a vaudeville blues I’ll acronymize as “PUNT” that anyone who isn’t a Black woman should avoid singing along to. Later she gets Too Short to explain the essence of the pimp while she demonstrates certain preachers and Big Pharma fit the bill. (Lest that last callout worry you, note that the “Ode to Nikki” isn’t to Nicki.) Scott can still hit high notes when she needs to; more important is that she retains a sense of swing that even good young R&Bers can’t match. She’s getting craftier with age, so I hope she can block out enough time for another LP this decade.
Grade: A MINUS (“Don’t Play”, “Pay U on Tuesday”, “Norf Side”)
Ari Lennox: Vacancy
Citing a lack of promotional support from Dreamville after 2022’s excellent Age/Sex/Location, she’s switched imprints and now has a lack of promotional support from Interscope. Too bad: she’s still the most natural-sounding of millennial R&B stars, not least because she sings about everyday activities. Sex is among those; however, so are cooking (“splatter that batter and you’re baking it”) and cleaning (“Got some water on the rug, made it flood/Maybe you could use your tongue like a plug”). UniMoth did spring for an amapiano single’s worth of producers, including a couple of useful Dupribeats, leaving Lennox to unify the album. Set up with Flamingos shoo-bops on “Under the Moon”, she’s the one who has to howl, and does so fetchingly. “High Key” has a few apropos melismatics; throughout, she hits the notes to show she’s performing the song in question. Though I often complain about astrology pop, I’m not going to deny the pleasure of dissing a boy or maybe twelve who “put the ho in horoscope”. And “Cool Down” shows pleasure’s something she knows how to get.
Grade: A MINUS (“Soft Girl Era”, “Cool Down”, “Vacancy”)
The Paranoid Style: Known Associates
They remain a words-first band; tally the rhymes for “dog’s breakfast” yourself so we can talk about other stuff. In many ways they’ve become much more musical over the last decade-plus: multiple guitarists are doing interesting things I can’t attribute, and their early EPs wouldn’t have been able to accommodate sax comping from an itinerant Mountain Goat. And as Elizabeth Nelson’s writing has densified, she’s adapted her vocal style to better express her own songs, running polysyllables into each other without loss of clarity and giving “A Barrier to Entry” a mock-heroic backing, unless that’s Lisa Walker. And yet (the entire Bracy-Nelson clan groans upon those conjunctions), this has come with a cost. On those early EPs, they weren’t quite such a words-first band: nothing here’s as start-to-finish melodic as three-fifths of Rock & Roll Just Can’t Recall. I stress this might be a worthwhile price: the same thing happened to Taylor Swift and she seems to be doing okay. Still, their thoughtful if prim non-LP “Passionate Kisses” cover implies a lyrics-tune trade-off is escapable, if not easily so.
Grade: A MINUS (“A Barrier to Entry”, “It’s a Dogs Breakfast (for LR)”, “Last Rites for the Comeback Kid”)
Dj Fantome: Zando Beat!
Fantome’s a masked-and-caped DJ who played and recorded in Zando, Kinshasa’s main market that claimed a million daily visitors to vendors overflowing as far as Avenue Luambo Makiadi, before its 2021 closure; it was supposed to reopen in February with more than nine toilet stalls (can’t find Internet evidence this has happened yet.) His electronics sound kind of Detroit, with heavy kicks, short repeated keyb figures, and the occasional reverby synth pad that’ll gorgonzola you in the face if you call it cheesy. The beats are liveliest when the rhythms somewhat resemble those of Congotronics (and thus any number of predecessors with or without avenues named after them), albeit without the eccentricity, but if you’re trying to make a million daily visitors dance, some surplus quirks get flushed down one of nine stalls. The PR makes a big deal about the vocals coming from local hoodlums, which might be why they’re uneven, though General Yvette or whichever of her gang does the “tchoo” on “P8 Balola” knows how to tchoo.
Grade: A MINUS (“P8 Balola”, “Simba Ngai”, “Mwasi Ya Mayi”)
Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream
As eclectic as breakthrough Phoenix, yet with her beloved Tranes more centered at the core of her alto sound and improvisational approach. She doesn’t start too far out so as not to scare Terence Blanchard, whose trumpet is one of several (plus tenor Chris Potter) she unites or entwines with. When she has the horn spectrum to herself, her sax sings or shouts sustained notes. “Mi Gente” starts out sounding like MJ’s “I Can’t Help It” before breaking into Latin groove; there and on the hip-hop ones and the fusiony ones with Hiromi Uehara, her sidepeople remind you this is rhythmic music. If she’s the latest in a long line of ace instrumentalists to be not as good at rapping, she knows to invite over Tank (of and the Bangas fame), Kassa Overall (who produces four tracks), and Bilal (Bilal!) to share the verbal lift and demonstrate earned togetherness. Somebody give her a chance to make her To Pimp a Butterfly. And by somebody I mean Kendrick.
Grade: A MINUS (“Mi Gente”, “Beyond the Dawn”, “Flame Keeper”)
Babalwa M: Acquiesce (2025)
A veteran of the early 2020s amapiano boom, Babalwa’s honeycomb tones flavored the smooth “private school” end of the scene until her breakup with DJ Kelvin Momo (they may or may not be back together, South African gossip is inscrutable to me.) Thereupon she flirted with the 3-step crew, notably on the Jazzwrld/Thukuthela/Thukzin “uValo”, a Semipop Life top ten single of 2025. Her strength is her ability to deliver a vocal performance that’s consistent over an entire song. In “Muzi Ka Baba”, she’s playing Penelope to an unnamed Odysseus, and she puts across fidelity and longing with the confidence to make the reunion sound like a fait accompli. If her emotional range is limited, that’s the genre—go find Zuchu if you want someone mad at her man. In fact, Momo shows up to co-produce “Smakade”, which voices gratitude despite hardship. Gossipmongers can read whatever they want into that, but there’s plenty to be grateful for on this album.
Grade: B PLUS (“Smakade”, “Muzi Ka Baba”, “Abangani Bamanga”)
Omar Sosa, Joo Kraus, Diego Piñera: Vibe Factor
Sosa’s a veteran Cuban pianist, Kraus is a nearly as veteran German trumpeter, Piñera’s a callow early middle-aged Uruguay to Cuba to Germany drummer who does his job without showing off except on the Latinest cut, “Candombra”. On this sensible 33-minute album, Sosa focuses on electric keybs, while Kraus keeps the mute in. They’re most interesting when overdubbing and/or effects let Sosa fulfill at least two roles out of bass, comping, and decoration, or all three, as on “Echofreak”. He plays his fattest phrases with even hands, and his chord-based solos eschew noodling. Kraus breaks out a kalimba at some point, and Sosa’s happy to show off his Afro bona fides. In their straight-ahead moments, Kraus is capable of carrying matters through his tone alone. He makes a few hippie vocal murmurings when his horn’s out of his mouth, but they aren’t too distracting. A small-scale pleasure.
Grade: B PLUS (“Echofreak”, “Steps”, “Candombra”)
Florence Dore: Hold the Spark
Many literate Americana records send me scurrying to the lyric sheet; this one sent me to The Ink in the Grooves, a Prof Dore-edited rocklit anthology with many more pages discussing Dylan than, say, all of hip-hop. Its thesis is that all postwar fiction is infused with rock and roll, because all postwar everything is. Who knows how many academic meeting attendees zone out and drop their mental needle on Levon Helm? (Not as many as who brain-stream Macklemore, I’d guess.) Here, while you’re thinking through her lyrics, Will Rigby’s steadfast drumming wrangles a rotating cast that furnishes her with enough music. Dore’s singing’s been compared to Lucinda Williams’s; fortunately for her Greil friendship, that’s wrong, as she shows too much determination even on the slow ones, and can break up weathered alto shades with a few relative high notes. Rock and roll is only one way the bookish can engage with the wider world. But it does have its advantages if you can’t rap.
Grade: B PLUS (“On Empty”, “Just Like Mookie Betts”, “Twelve Great Minds (Department Meeting)”)