A couple of years ago, when Amerigo Gazaway relocated to Berkeley, California, the Middle Tennessee hip-hop community lost one of its brightest stars. A formerly Nashville-based graduate of MTSU’s Electronic Media program, Gazaway has been praised in media as disparate as XXL, The Los Angeles Times and NPR.
Blurring the line between remixing and producing new songs, Gazaway is best known for his Soul Mates series of releases, which pair a modern artist like Yasiin Bey (f.k.a. Mos Def) with a “soul mate” from the past like Marvin Gaye. Each album features a cappella hip-hop verses laid over beats constructed from the elder statesman’s catalog. Imagine Danger Mouse making The Grey Album but drawing on the entire back catalogs of both The Beatles and Jay-Z.
The premise behind 1990, Gazaway’s full-length collaboration with Bay Area songstress Xiomara, is similarly referential. The album is loaded with musical nods to ’90s hip-hop and R&B. From the Teddy Riley-inspired new jack swing of “Westside Swing” to the subtle reworking of the horn sample used on Souls of Mischief’s underground classic, “93 ’Til Infinity,” 1990 puts Gazaway and Xiomara’s deep knowledge of ’90s music on full display. But the album is no overly cerebral exercise in music trivia.
Though the hat tips to the past are abundant, 1990 sounds surprisingly fresh. And that has just as much to do with Xiomara. While Gazaway’s beats will have production heads going nuts, Xiomara’s the clear star of the show. Her jazz-inspired approach sees her shifting shape from song to song and shining all the while. Though only her second full-length release, Xiomara sings with the confidence and stylistic range of a seasoned vet. She channels SWV one minute, Faith Evans the next, and then turns to the late ’90s neo-soul of Jill Scott. And that’s to say nothing of her songwriting, which is stellar throughout.
More an innovative reinterpretation than a nostalgic rehash, 1990 is Gazaway and Xiomara’s love letter to a decade of great black music. Make sure to check out “Westside Swing,” the wistful, neo-soul of “That Old Alarm” featuring Bay Area rapper Blu, and the song that first brought Xiomara and Gazaway together, the inspired “You Don’t Know Jack Pt. II.”
You can find 1990 and Gazaway’s previous releases at amerigo.bandcamp.com.
