The Dominican Jazz Project

Now if there’s ever two producers I’d have a field day coming together as a duo it’s these two! Why? Well one has spent the past few years paving his own lane in the underground landscape working with the whose who of the scene while the other has had one of the biggest and brightest landings I’ve seen in the culture yet! The rising star vs the established icon. This is a tape you’re gonna want to tap into! This is the brand new beat tape between producers -Dominican Kev & Jazzy Lion Man and collectively they dropped 15 tracks with some of the most intriguing song titles I’ve seen yet! -Crying On A Rooftop With A Durag On -Dirty Chinese Restaurant In The Hood 2 -More Marshmallows -Locked Out My PayPal and more. You know a project is gonna be fire when the song titles alone get you hyped and peak your curiosity! Well across this tracks we hear what sounds to me as a perfectly synchronous partnership between the duo where we get to hear equal sides to the men and what they bring to the table! There’s no one side taking over the recordings, rather a harmonious rhythm of sounds and instrumentals that highlights the best of both worlds! From tracks like -5 Deer which is Jazzy’s first showing on the album as he stars with this almost ominous spoken word snippet that describes this man’s experience seeing 5 deer come out of the woods! from there we get into the beat which is methodical combination of light delicate keys, hypnotic drums, thick plucked strings and topped off with some violin strings! This is one of those sit by a fire place with a cigar and a book kind of vibes! There’s tracks such as -Felipe Lopez which is the opening track and also the first one by Kev! This one consists of a flashy Jazz inspired Herbie Hancock vibe track with those shaking maracas infused with some long/deep bass strings and some truly skeletal drums that can just be heard in the background alongside these other elements! Stripped back but atmospheric as all hell! There’s tracks like Dominican Jazz Wave which was produced by Jazzy which has a more ambient feel to it when you add in that snipped vocal harmony that’s cut into 3 second intervals looped together alongside what sounds like this subtle choir vocals in the background ever so angelic and more stripped back and skeletal drums that adds a little bit of texture to the track! As the song continues I swear I hear some faint piano keys but that could just be me! There’s tracks like -Crying On A Rooftop With A Durag On which is by Kev and doesn’t sound at all what I thought this song title context would sound like! I was expecting some dark, gritty boom Bap not this lavish chipmunk soul influence with that looped voice, subtle plucked strings, sharp chords in the background and easy listening drums! So apparently this is what sounds like to cry on a rooftop with a Durag on! Who would have thought! -Locked Out Of My PayPal is a crazy track as well! Interesting concept that I didn’t know how to expect it to sound but apparently that situation calls for a Jazz aesthetic combined with Lo Fi elements with beautiful subtle Jazz horns, light used drum patterns and some lavish bass that keeps the whole track together! Look, at the end of the day whether you’re a fan of these two or not you can’t deny that they are at the forefront of the culture. We literally have the present and the future coming together to present just how grand, exciting and forward the underground music scene is and who better to demonstrate this then them? Go buy the album and see what I mean!