As I was scrolling through Spotify mindlessly, shopping through the endless options to listen to, I found this. A project by two of my favourites in the underground! I knew I had to give it some press, so let’s talk about it!
This is the 2024 release by MC Primo Jab and Producer Chuck Chan. Both men have released some of the most captivating albums of the last few years, and together with no features, they decided it was time to bring together the ultimate supergroup. So let’s get it!
Across these six tracks and 19 minutes of content, we have an album that’s focused on food! And I love it. Every song in one way or another mentions food, and as someone who is more passionate about food over everything (besides music), that made this a favourite of mine already. Plus, having Primo Jab on the cut, rapping and incorporating different bars and witty puns about food and double entendres and the whole nine yards!
He’s already proven how gifted he is with his pen game and original style and lyricism (as was further demonstrated this year with What Do Sounds Smell Like?) but the fact that he had to make sure he referenced ‘eating’ or ‘food’ or write a specific bar where food is used in a clever parable or analogy, man, that shit got me so hyped!
Maybe I’m on my own on this, but I fucking LOVE when artists are tasked with doing creative or conceptual shit like this. Where a specific topic is the main focus, and they work around it, it’s a dope process. I wish more artists would try, and the fact someone as naturally gifted as Primo Jab was doing it was even more satisfying!
Of course, he ain’t alone because he’s got the legendary Chuck Chan on his side, and across these six tracks, we hear him create various examples of skeletal and ambient/atmospheric sonic experiences that only he could pull off. The pattern I discovered was that he’d latch onto a few key instruments and polish/master them until they shine bright enough to carry the production! For example, track two, ‘Raw Cuisine’, where it features that methodical bass notes combined with that choir-style female harmony vocal loop, which, paired with that minimalism beat, creates something phenomenal!
Or track three, ‘Gourmet Pain’, which has what sounds like subtle horn or jazz chords that are playing on an infectious loop that takes over the track and gives it that ‘out-of-this-world’ vibe to it.
I love Chuck’s formula on this record; he’s taking advantage of the ‘less is more’ approach and making gold out of it!
To me, you can’t beat this combination. Two men in the prime of their careers coming together for a conceptual EP? You can’t fucking beat it. Check it out ASAP!
https://open.spotify.com/album/71ff2gw7tNGJX8Nhm6DqLz?si=9HGXLN0GTnSPJQkHK73XZw
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