Daniel Gray-Kontar might not be a name you're familiar with, but as "Replife" he has recently made somewhat of a shockwave on the Futuresoul/hip-hop scene. He first came to my conciousness as a guest on the sublime Politik album (MdCL & Bembe's recent project). A little digging around then uncovered a project he'd recently completed for the ever wonderful "Futuristica Music" label. Production comes from big names on the London scene including Dego & Keidi Tatham, Atjazz, MdCL, Arch-typ RLP, Don-Ray, Kinetic & a few others...
Similarly to the Badu album, when the beats are such high quality, it takes a hell of a talent to still own the project & come out on top (especially for me, a producer, who tends to be more interested in the beat than the words). But Replife does this with ease, style & grace. The man has a delicate flow, poetic, rhythmic & melodic that draws you to his voice & what he has to say...which is a lot, we have one enlightened dude here.
So all in all this is an unbelievably fine hip-hop album that should appeal to the hip-hoppers & the future-soulers in equal amounts, but most of all, for those of us that just love good music, there's enough here for you to love for a very long time. To think this man packed in rapping years ago, it would have been a tragedy if he hadn't made this album. Thank you Daniel.
Another Five Star album *****
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