3x3: Tom Misch/Yussef Dayes, KOKOROKO, and Jamiroquai

Every week, for the past year,  I've collaborated with two other Brooklyn music scenesters on a private social network/playlist called 3x3. The premise was simple. 3 people produce a new playlist of 3 songs every(ish) day at 3pm. I'm using this space to share my selections and the thought process around why I chose each track and artist. Also, the playlist gets deleted every day, so in lieu of posting it here, I will just share the individual tracks. 

First off, creating a playlist of three songs is HARD. The typical Spotify Playlist could be hours long, allowing for mistakes and a bit of randomness along the way. But with 3 songs...well, the brevity of it just makes you more creative by nature. A lot of times, I start with a "base" track and proceed onward from there.

Yussef Dayes + Tom Misch - What Kinda Music

This was my base starter track. I stumbled upon this song thanks to Spotify's precious algorithm figuring out that I like both Tom Misch and that I've played a few tracks from super-drummer Yussef Dayes. To be honest, I know a little bit less about the latter, but from what I can fathom, Dayes is a part of the exploding UK jazz scene. The drummer and multi-instrumentalist first came onto the scene with his album Black Focus (under the moniker Yussef Kamal) project in 2016 and has been on the upswing ever since. You'll notice a bit more experimentation and genre-hopping in his latest efforts with white-boy crooner Tom Misch, and "What Kinda Music" can only be described as a mix of hip-hop and acid jazz. I'm digging it.

KOKOROKO - Carry Me Home

With the base song locked in, I now had to figure out what direction I wanted to go in. With Tom and Yussef, I could either go the R&B route, stay in neo-jazz, or even go towards hip-hop or instrumentalists. However, I decided to stay in London for this one, lifting up another band that I've been digging from the scene lately. To say that I know a lot about the scene over there would be a lie. It's been a long time since I would stream Giles Peterson's BBC specialist show or bootleg white labels from the Internet. But KOKOROKO's blend of West African sounds with new wave and acid jazz fits in perfectly as a bridge between the modern and older school sounds of the next track.

Jamiroquai - Mr. Moon (Remastered)

Sometimes when people talk about the "new" London jazz scene I chuckle. I guess people forget that there was a slight sliver in time when acid jazz was actually popular, and selling out festivals even made it onto MTV here in The States. (Back when they played videos of course!) The new players are an evolution of acts such as Jamiroquai and Brand New Heavies among a slew of others. So naturally, I had to round out this London tour with one of the OGs. I know that Jamiroquai's cultural appropriation and some would say bastardization of the genre hasn't aged well, however, Return of The Space Cowboy has been one of my favorite albums since high school, and I would be remiss I didn't add a track here. "Mr Moon" wasn't my favorite track on that album, but I thought it had the sonic quality to go with the other songs in this trio.