If you haven’t been following Georgia Anne Muldrow over the last few years, you’ve been missing out on one of the most creative working musicians today. It’s hard to put a label on Muldrow, as she works in so many facets, as a vocalist, emcee, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. While discussion about the lack of female emcees in hip hop is still relevant, Muldrow takes the discussion a step further. If you’re up on your hip hop and can name several female emcees off the top of your head, challenge yourself and try to name as many female producers or multi-instrumentalists as you can. Fortunately, Muldrow developed her musical talents without stopping at the point where others have. She continues to live a life where family, friends, and music are always in dialogue with each other. She’s frequently collaborated with her partner Declaime, she’s brought in guest artists like Bilal on her songs, she’s produced records for artists such as MED, and she’s remixed artists such as Boog Brown. She’s worked in just about every capacity a musician can work, and she’s created some of the most compelling music in the process, bringing in a wide range of genres to form her sound. The one thing she hadn’t done up until the point of her career was to work with another producer for a full length album. It’s not something she necessarily needed to do, so it would have to a be a situation where she wanted to do it. With this in mind, it makes sense that it would have to be someone as interesting as Madlib for Muldrow to be comfortable enough to give the keys to someone else for an entire album. On the flipside, this album also marks the first time Madlib has worked with a female vocalist for a full length album. Then again, Muldrow is not just some singer. It’s clear that a great amount of mutual respect built the foundation for this album.

The respect and understanding that Madlib has for Muldrow is evident over the course of Seeds. This does not sound like a Madlib album with Muldrow’s vocals. This sounds like a Muldrow album with some interesting twists that she might not have come up with on her own. The result is a great album that keeps revealing itself the more you listen to it. The success of this collaboration is apparent from the first few seconds of the album, when the title track gets underway. Madlib is able to work in familiar trademarks like his slightly off-kilter syncopated drums and obscure soul and jazz samples, but everything he does puts Muldrow in a position to shine. “Seeds” samples heavily form Harold Melvin & the Bluenotes’ “Where’s the Concern for the People,” but before listening to the source material, I easily mistook the piano line featured in the song as one that Muldrow would have written and played herself. The subject matter discussed in the song discusses the need to care for the future of our planet, whether it’s the literal or figurative seeds of life. Some of the most exciting points on the album come when Muldrow is really able to let go and lose herself in the vocals, trusting the grooves that Madlib has laid done. This first happens on “Kali Yuga,” a wonderfully funky joint that demands you to turn up the stereo and dance, but where things really come to a boil is on “Kneecap Jelly.” It’s a politically charged song that finds Muldrow frustrated with the lack of political action being taken by the masses and making a passionate plea to her listeners to stand strong for their rights.

For an album that’s her first full length release with another producer, Seeds doesn’t stand apart from the rest of her catalogue as much as you might anticipate. This isn’t necessarily good or bad, though. There are moments where Madlib pushes her outside her comfort zone a little, maybe arranging a song in a different structure than she might, but the essence of this album is absolutely in line with everything she’s done up to this point. For some artists, that might be an indication of staleness or boring work, but Muldrow was already such a challenging artist with so many different sides to her, it’s hard to push her any harder than she already pushes herself. This is all to say that Seeds continues the already great line of albums that Muldrow has put out over the last few years.