BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: Sour Soul [LEX]

Why you'll love it

This 180g EU repress comes with a printed inner sleeve. Sour Soul made the 2015 Polaris Music Prize shortlist, and it features "Ray Gun" with MF DOOM and "Six Degrees" with Danny Brown.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in the EU
• Lyrics included

About the album

Ghostface Killah has rapped over a thousand classic soul samples. For Sour Soul he got the real thing: Toronto's BadBadNotGood, with producer Frank Dukes at the helm, playing live in the spirit of the 1960s and 70s records his whole style grew out of, with no sampling at all.

Much of it was cut at Thomas Brenneck's Dunham Studios in Brooklyn, with players from the Budos Band and Daptone engineer Wayne Gordon, and the rest at Dukes' Kingsway Studios in Toronto with local players River Tiber and David Lewis, so the city gets a proper share of the credit. The title track and "Gunshowers" with Elzhi are lean and moody, "Ray Gun" gives MF DOOM a cinematic stage, "Six Degrees" lets Danny Brown loose, and the instrumentals "Mono" and "Stark's Reality" show off the band's love of vintage tones, with saxophone, vibraphone, cello and tuba woven through the arrangements.

Drowned in Sound called it sublime, and it remains a high point for both BBNG and Ghostface. It lives in our hip hop section, though the jazz section has been eyeing it for years.

Also at Kops: more BadBadNotGood on vinyl · browse CDN Hip Hop

Tracklist

Listen

On Lex Records (cat# LEX103LP), a reissue of the 2015 album.