For a lot of people, Lyrics Born’s Later That Day wasn’t just his coming out party, it also brought our attention to the wonderful voice of Joyo Velarde. It seems like it wasn’t much longer after, seeing the two of them on tour together, and at the Quannum World Tour, that they kept telling the audience to be on the lookout for a Joyo Velarde solo album. This was 2003-2004.

This is the third installment in Madlib’s Medicine Show series. Here, he comes back as the Beat Konducta and takes us on a trip to Africa.

While this is supposed to be a Beat Konducta joint based on samples from African music from the early ‘70s, this plays out more like a well put together mix-tape. Not that I’m necessarily complaining. It just feels more like a lot of snippets of pan-African records that Madlib occasionally throws a beat under than a complete re-imagining of the music.

Georgia Anne Muldrow is quickly becoming a favorite for me, even though I only discovered her last year. I’ve since filled up a bit of the back catalogue, and I’m certainly impressed by her output this year.

I mostly know Thavius Beck as a producer, who worked with artists like Busdriver and Saul Williams, along with releasing solo albums of instrumental works. It was with this background that I was pleasantly surprised to find that this album not only features Beck as producer/songwriter, but also as lyricist/emcee. Even more pleasant is discovering is that he’s quite capable on the mic.

While I’m going to try my best to be objective, I need to be up front about this: I wear my Little Brother hoodie just about every day. I’m definitely a fan. Unfortunately, this album is going to be the last Little Brother album, at least for the foreseeable future. After hinting at this possibility after Get Back came out, Phonte and Big Pooh have decided to pursue other projects for the time being.

Declaime (Dudley Perkins) and Georgia Anne Muldrow have worked together before, but I’m not sure if their collaboration has quite come together like this before. Hip hop with the psychedelic funk edge of someone like Sly and the Family Stone or Parliament-Funkadelic, this Bay Area duo really work well together.

Sometimes I’m more upset when artists are mediocre than when they’re terrible. Case in point: Grieves.

I had to pick up this album on concept alone. A hip hop album based on High Fidelity? It’s an interesting enough concept and I’m a big enough fan of both the book and movie that I’m going to give this album a fair chance. I don’t know too much about Donwill’s group Tanya Morgan, so I can’t give you too much insight as to where this fits into their discography. I do know hip hop and High Fidelity, and was intrigued by this interesting idea.

Bonobo, the British producer and DJ, has flown somewhat under the radar, even though he’s been recording for over ten years.

Hopefully, Black Sands will develop his popularity. It’s a wonderful down tempo album that feels warm and familiar upon first listen. It opens with a quiet piece featuring strings and piano and minimal percussion. Then, the drums and bass kick in as a gentle yet driving beat takes over and sets the tone.

The second installment in the new Medicine Show series, where we learn that the rules are odd numbered entries are original material, and the even numbered offerings are mixtapes. This particular mixtape is a blend of Brazilian music, from samba to psychedelic.

I’m not particularly well-versed in this music, so I can’t break it down for you with each track and artist, but I can tell you it’s a good mix of familiar and unfamiliar, and a good blend of genres. There’s some psychedelic rock, some soft jazz, some Sergio Mendes, and so on.