Young producers push the limits of rap music every other day now, from Lex Luger’s trap soundtracks to Squadda B‘s progressive slaps to ISSUE’s modern lo-fi soundscapes to Clams Casino’s new age rap anthems…
… to KeyBoard Kid, another Lil B producer, that followed up his hit-or-miss beat tape Munchies with the improved Adventures From The Cigar Galaxy and NorthWest Astronaut, and now have done hit a home-run straight out the solar system with Where Have I Floated.
(#RARE: worthwhile #based music not rapped on by Lil B.)
This feels like listening to jungle and Björk and Warp and Rephlex releases in the 90s; pure explorational joy in electronic sounds. From bedroom studios out into the streets to the final frontier, to boldly swag where no man has cooked before.
And talent pop up on the radar every other day now.
At times Where Have I Floated reminds me in mood and materiality of a dreamier side of Drexciya, an early Kraftwerk type experimentalism, a a living room studio auteur like Money Mark – with traces of video games and Vangelis rather than Moog and Sly & The Family Stone.
While Lil B, who gets shouted out throughout the album and who inspirational chants and lingo is lifted from rather comfortably (but why be mad? The kid is after all an affiliate, the producer, not just a fan but a member, and Where Have I Floated is not conceived so at to cash in on hype (that would be Soulja Boy’s department) but to blast off into space), makes rap embracing all aspects of earthly life, Keyboard Kid seems to have migrated to space permanently.
We can only salute such humble high-mindedness among our young fellow travellers.
Since Lil B’s discogs-page is incomplete, the best way for his songs produced by KeyBoard Kid would be MySpace – and youtubes displayed below.