The Waxidermist is an artist from Paris who had been working for years as a bass player, songwriter, arranger, and producer under a couple of different names before emerging as The Waxidermist in 2015, when he released his first self-titled EP. His most recent effort came in 2018, when he released the full-length album, The Origami Case. Now he’s back with another ambitious album, Tribe.

For this album, much like Wu-Tang before him, The Waxidermist faces East to draw inspiration from Samurai tales to create a frame story for the album. The theme isn’t strict, but more of a jumping off point for various collaborators, with song titles like “Wu,” “Chi,” “Inner Peace,” and “Shaolin’s Monk,” giving you an idea of some of the themes explored here. While various emcees will riff on these ideas, you’re not getting a straight narrative across the album, and musically there isn’t much of a Japanese influence. The theme is more of a general idea than a tangible plot in this sense. To create this project, The Waxidermist is bringing in a lot of friends. He’s playing bass, double bass, and producing all of the tracks, but we also get scratches from Jesus Crise, Yann Cléry on flute, Matthieu Detton on cello, Jerôme « Tchiky » Perez on guitar, David Monet on keyboards, and Gérald Bonnegrace on percussion. When you bring all of this together, you get this really full and rich symphonic boom bap sound that is very grand and cinematic and a lot of fun to listen to. To fill out the album, The Waxidermist is also bringing in a roster of emcees and vocalists to step to the mic and riff on these general ideas, with Starrlight, RacecaR, DistantStarr, Elodie Rama, Ta-Ti, and Bibi Tanga all bringing a lot of confidence, playfulness, and skill to proceedings. Tribe is a very entertaining album with a really big sound to it, although it isn’t all that successful as a themed concept album. The good news is that once you set that idea aside and just enjoy it as a general hip hop album, you just have a lot of great boom bap with a symphonic flavor that you can keep coming back to.

Tribe is an ambitious outing from The Waxidermist, and although it might not be everything he initially outlined, it’s still a damn good hip hop album. He’s got a distinct style as a producer, songwriter, and arranger, and he knows how to work with a lot of talented musicians to bring his sound to where it needs to be. Tribe is a nice next step for The Waxidermist.