Serengeti is an emcee from Chicago that has been releasing music since the early ‘00s, best known for his series of albums exploring the fictional character Kenny Dennis, and for working as one-half of the duo Cavanaugh alongside Open Mike Eagle. Greg Saunier is the drummer and founding member of Deerhoof, an art-rock group from San Francisco that got started in the mid-‘90s. Now the two have joined forces as one of the most unlikely duos of 2020 to release the album With Greg From Deerhoof.

Serengeti and Greg initially met back in 2009, when Geti was asked to open for Deerhoof when they were passing through Chicago on tour. A few months later, Deerfhoof brought Serengeti and Why? out on tour with them. Fast forward nine years, and the two crossed paths again, this time as part of the PEOPLE residency in Berlin, and they both ended up signing up for the same slot at a recording studio as part of the sessions. Not having anything prepared, they improvised a seventeen minute song they ended up calling “I Got Your Password.” In April of 2020, Greg reached out to the engineer of that session and got a hold of the recording, which then inspired Greg and Serengeti to actually make an album together. Of course, we’re living in a pandemic, so they couldn’t easily meet in the same city to collaborate. So, while Serengeti started writing some verses, Greg got cracking on making some really abstract beats based on Broadway compositions, modern classical music, and art-rock. Whenever Serengeti would get one of these beats in his inbox, he wouldn’t listen to them first, but instead would just hit record and adjust his flow as these wild beats would come at him. The result is an album that not only doesn’t sound like anything else out there right now, but it’s also one that really highlights two highly skilled musicians that are really pushing each other to do something that they wouldn’t necessarily do on their own. While Saunier has plenty of experience as a musician, and he has championed hip hop musicians over the years, he hasn’t worked exclusively on a hip hop album like this before. The fun thing here is that while he clearly has respect for the genres, he hasn’t internalized any rules about what makes a good beat, so a lot of these songs end up as funky, herky-jerky free jazz and art-rock tracks. Knowing what we know about how Serengeti recorded himself, it makes it all the more impressive, since he’s not exactly freestyling over “Simon Says” or “Tried by 12.” The result is an album that has crazy live energy to it and tons of creativity. It’s something that will knock your socks off, but then inspire you to lean in and listen as close as you can, because you never know what’s coming next. Serengeti is coming at you with stream-of-consciousness flows that touch on really smart observations about the music industry or society at large, but then he’ll suddenly zag and get abstract with it, or he might hit you with a short character study, all while Greg is giving you intricate percussion, sax, strings, and more, all in unexpected ways. This all builds to a climax when you get to the track that started it all, the seventeen minute jam session of “I Got Your Password,” which is just about as wild of a musical ride that you’ll go on this year.

It’s not often when I can say with this amount of confidence that you will not hear an album like With Greg From Deerhoof this year. Serengeti and Saunier have amazing chemistry together and pushed each other in all the best ways to really go beyond any musical boundaries and just have fun with it.