The Madlib Invazion Music Library Series was established by Madlib and Egon over the course of the pandemic, created with a desire to give their creative friends a place to have the freedom to create without any limitations or expectations. The only constraints were that it had to work as a stand alone album, and it had to work as a one-stop, easy-to-clear source for background music in film and television. The first entry now comes to us from JJ Whitefield, who gives us Ethio Meditations/Drama Al Dente.

JJ Whitefield is a funk veteran who has played with groups like Poets of Rhythm and Whitefield Brothers. For this album, he assembled a top notch ensemble Jakob Thu, Sam Davids, and Igor Zhukovsky on drums, Karl Hector on bass, Essatu Baraki on keyboards, Wolfi Schlick on flute and saxophone, Getachew Atya on vibraphone, and Thomas Lea on violin and viola. Whitefield himself is floating between guitar, sitar, bamboo flute, and synths. Together, they are laying down some gritty, soulful, instrumental funk. Clearly inspired by artists like Dennis Coffey, David Axelrod, and others of that early ‘70s era, Whitefield is giving you great grooves that will have your head bobbing before you know it. The ensemble is just as tight as you’d assume funk veterans like these guys would be, and Whitefield has done a great job in writing and arranging these songs that balance the groove with great melodies that will stick with you and song structure that keeps things moving so that no one groove ever gets stale. In doing all of this, Whitefield has made an album that producers digging in the crates would have lost their shit over back in the day, there is just so much tasty funk and top notch musicianship contained within.

Madlib and Egon have given us a lot of great music over the years, and the first entry into this new series of releases is more than promising – it’s downright tasty. Whitefield kicked things off with a bang, delivering the kind of funk that never goes out of style.