For as great a music city as Austin is, it’s not a great hip hop town. Touring acts will usually get good crowds, but as far as nurturing and supporting local hip hop acts, Austin leaves a lot to be desired. With that said, I was very disappointed to discover a talented producer from Austin going by the name of BoomBaptist right as I was moving out of the state. While his first release didn’t come out until 2010, his latest collection reveals that he’s been making beats for quite some time. This collection of unreleased material dates from 2003-2005, and it demonstrates that his beat-making ability is not newly found.

What’s most apparent when listening to The Lost Files is that BoomBaptist really knows how to rock a groove. Of course it helps to know that these beats were all constructed on the MPC, which lends itself well to a certain style of chopping samples and rocking some funky drums, but it still takes a lot of skill to do it well. What makes this collection interesting is how well Baptist is able to incorporate different genres, whether it’s the Latin jazz of “Cuban Cigar with Rum,” the meditative plucked strings, bass, and eerie horns of “Film Noir,” or the soft jazz-rock of “Cheesy does it.” However, what seems to really be Boom Baptist’s wheelhouse is the jazz-funk that so permeates this collection. Sure, it’s been done before, but when you’re bobbing your head to some busy syncopated drums and a fat bass line, you don’t really care if it’s been done before, only that it’s done well. My original plan was to single out a track as a personal favorite to write about, but it that just seems to be whichever track is currently playing. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the funk, and Boom Baptist brings it on The Lost Files.

Somehow it feels like a missed opportunity to know that these funky beats were all coming out of the city I lived in at the time, all without my knowledge. It might not make a lot of sense, but the cross section of my love of hip hop and my love of Austin was never very big. That doesn’t really matter, though. What does matter is that BoomBaptist has established himself as talented hip hop producer, and this collection stands on its own very well.