After recently rediscovering my enjoyment of the likes of Ugly Duckling, De La Soul and Jurassic 5, I was eager to give this funky compilation a good listen.
All Good Funk Alliance have teamed up with their friends and label-mates and remixed a few tracks to produce what feels like quite a personal mix tape pulled straight from a brother’s afro. Soul samples mixed with modern hip hop beats are reminiscent of music put out by early hip hop troupes such as Sugarhill Gang and A Tribe Called Quest. Trumpets, slap bass and electronic drums thread together this eighteen track album almost seamlessly.
Tracks like ‘Some Lovin’ and ‘The Future is Now’, showcase old fashioned disco and funk with 21st century electro tweaks, something that should be heard more. Personal stand out ‘Party Packer’ makes me want, in the words of Mr Cook, to “shake what yo mamma gave ya”, with the familiar uptempo breaks and killer funk guitar hooks.
Neat rapping and scratching modernise some would-be 70s throwback tracks, which have a tendency to fade into the background. If this album were an economy, and rhythm and brass were the currency, it would be a case of move over ‘credit crunch’, groove over ‘credit funk’.
