BadBadNotGood: Mid Spiral (2LP, 180g, white & blue vinyl) [PEOPLE'S CHAMP]

Why you'll love it

This 180g 2LP set gathers all three parts of Mid Spiral, Chaos, Order and Growth, on white & blue vinyl. It's the Toronto group's return to instrumental jazz, from a band with two Grammy wins for their songwriting and production.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• White & blue vinyl
• Stereo mix

About the album

BadBadNotGood started in 2010 in Humber College's jazz program, three students bonding over MF Doom and Odd Future rather than bebop standards. Fourteen years and a lot of famous phone calls later, with Kendrick Lamar, Tyler, The Creator, Daniel Caesar and Ghostface Killah among their collaborators, they went back to where they started: instrumental jazz.

Alex Sowinski, Chester Hansen and Leland Whitty recorded Mid Spiral in one intensive week at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles in February 2024, widening the circle with Felix Fox-Pappas on keys, Kaelin Murphy on trumpet, Juan Carlos Medrano on percussion and Tyler Lott on guitar. The music folds hip-hop, neo-soul, psychedelia and funk into the jazz, and it first came out digitally in three moods: Chaos, Order and Growth. "Eyes On Me" and "Take Me With You" set the tone, "Juan's World" hands Medrano the spotlight, "Sétima Regra" leans toward Brazil, and "Celestial Hands" floats.

It's a loose, generous record that sounds like friends playing in a room together. Not bad for a band whose drummer once stayed enrolled at Humber partly for the dental plan.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On XL Recordings (cat# XL1450LP), the 2024 album.