{"id":3920,"date":"2021-12-11T06:50:53","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T06:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/?p=3920"},"modified":"2021-12-12T21:36:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T21:36:59","slug":"single-review-motherland-journey-blue-lab-beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/2021\/12\/11\/single-review-motherland-journey-blue-lab-beats\/","title":{"rendered":"Single Review: &#8220;Motherland Journey&#8221; &#8211; Blue Lab Beats, KillBeatz, Fela Kuti"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spotify Embed: Motherland Journey\" width=\"100%\" height=\"80\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/5Rd4IgnXeREcqfv71DZ5tf?si=0ff1d500abec4da8&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>When this dropped in my email, I was\u2026 shocked.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Lab Beats have been on my radar for a very long time, and they\u2019ve made some incredible music. If you don\u2019t believe me go look them up\u2026<\/p>\n<p>This track is no different in fact\u2026.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>They upped their game.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>NKOK (Namali Kwaten) and Mr. DM (David Mrakpor) have only gone and used the vocals of Fela Kuti on this track. For those of you who don\u2019t know he\u2019s one of the founding fathers of afrobeat as we know it, without him it could be argued that the afrobeat artists wouldn\u2019t exist today.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s amazing.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>My sister Justina coined a term a few years ago that I loved, this is ancestral soul as a genre, and it also taps into the relatively new genre amapiano that comes out of South Africa. They put their own unique jazzy twist on it too, with an addictive guitar line, but I have to shout out the horns that are being played here! WOW! Jazzy to the max. I was listening to this on the way home, and I\u2019ve been running it back and forth just to get the vibe.<\/p>\n<p>This was co written and produced with legendary Ghanaian engineer and producer KillBeatz. The estate of Mr. Kuti gave their blessing for this to be released &#8211; the track itself is based around the vocals from his song \u201cEverything Scatter\u201d. Shout out to the talents of Poppy Daniels and Kaidi Akinnibi playing those killer horn parts and solos!<\/p>\n<p>So who are Blue Lab Beats?<\/p>\n<p>Well, they\u2019re a duo from London, NKOK and Mr. DM met in the hallways of WAC (Weekends Arts College) where NKOK would bust his beats in the lunch hall, and Mr. DM invited him to come and hang out in a studio &#8211; watching Mr. DM play every instrument in the room\u2026. BOOM. It was a match made in heaven.<\/p>\n<p>There is one more detail\u2026..<\/p>\n<p>What is it?<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re grammy nominated for their work on the <b>Angelique Kidjo <\/b>album <b><i>Mother Nature<\/i><\/b>, and have a <b>MOBO <\/b>nomination for \u2018Best Jazz Act\u2019.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1009\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1-1009x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3921\" srcset=\"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1-1009x1024.jpeg 1009w, https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1-296x300.jpeg 296w, https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1-768x779.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1-59x60.jpeg 59w, https:\/\/platinummind.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/IMG_6D4B6FCBD5FD-1.jpeg 1018w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1009px) 100vw, 1009px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When this dropped in my email, I was\u2026 shocked. Blue Lab Beats have been on my radar for a very long time, and they\u2019ve made some incredible music. If you don\u2019t believe me go look them up\u2026 This track is no different in fact\u2026.\u00a0 They upped their game.\u00a0 NKOK (Namali Kwaten) and Mr. DM (David &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,220,208,52,139,31,30,215,187,166,162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afrobeat","category-amapiano","category-ghana","category-guitar","category-jazz","category-keyboards","category-music","category-nigeria","category-saxophone","category-south-africa","category-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3935,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions\/3935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platinummind.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}