Ben Bada Boom is a producer from Hamburg who has been releasing music since the beginning of the decade. He first came to our attention when he released the collaborative album, Collision, with Australian producer Amin Payne back in 2013. His last album, Meanwhile in Barmbek, came out in 2017. Now he comes back with a new project, Welcome to Boombek (The B-Funk Story).

If it wasn’t already clear from the title of the album, the opening track, “Hamburg City Love,” featuring Koolade and Cissalc, will make it perfectly clear that this is Ben Bada Boom’s tribute to the G-Funk era, as they rework “California Love” and make it their own. By tribute, I mean that while this album largely features all of the elements of G-Funk that you’re familiar with, Ben Bada Boom does take some liberties here and there to make the sound his own, and to also pay tribute to some of the music that influenced G-Funk. What this means in a practical sense is that we get plenty of that big bass and smooth West Coast funk that is going to sound amazing bumping from your car stereo all summer long, but we also get some electro-boogie and some R&B slow jams as well. On the other end of the spectrum, there are also all sorts of subtle moments scattered across the album where BBB is updating the sound with modern production techniques and bringing in a little bit of European electronic influence as well. The result is an album that pays tribute to an influential era, but also lets Ben Bada Boom shine as well. He’s a talented producer, and in listening to this album, it feels like this must have been a lot of fun to make for him, since it’s so much fun to listen to.

Welcome to Boombek (The B-Funk Story) is a really easy album to listen to. Ben Bada Boom makes some killer funk that will have you blasting the beats and nodding your head all summer long. He does a great job of paying respect to his influences, while also putting his own spin on the music.