hi it's bakar i'm at amoeba doing what's in your bag
i found so much good stuff my mom
is a humongous r b lady it was records like toni braxton unbreak my heart
i remember just hearing like toni braxton's like deep tone and i always remembered it and my mom
and dad actually like that their like wedding video was like the soundtrack to that was unbreak my heart
so that's why i picked toni braxton because i love toni braxton aaliyah was just always in
our house especially this record like we need a revolution i just remember that beat so clearly
and i think the common theme between even this like mary j blige record no more drama and uh
like and swv stuff is like it's just like powerful black women i don't know whether it was knowingly
my mom was doing that but i was always surrounded by like my mom has eight sisters so so like maybe
that was like almost like a representation of that you know what i mean but i was always like
strong like powerful black women talking about um talking about being independent and you know
all these kind of things so this fits into that mode of course
like uh sweetest taboo i remember like i would go back home to tanzania and sweetest taboo was like
a big song at that moment like everyone was listening to sweetest taboo love sade
in that same vein ms dynamite amazing
even when i listen to ms dynamite like now like i think it was on a fifa like i can't remember what fifa it was
but we would just me and my cousins we would just
play those games nonstop so and just a uk legend like and even the
sound like when you listen to ms dynamite like the sound of that song
just a cool cadence a cool woman
big uk history like ms dynamite yeah i want to talk about this mount kimbie record
this record is one of my favorite records of all time
it's like from start to finish it's just perfect to me like it's like one of the
first records that like this and like burial they like really introduced me to like textures
in music like especially the electronic music you know we went through like it was like drum
and bass then we went to dubstep and then there was like post like the really obvious dubstep sound
there was like this future dubstep thing that was happening in london and i feel like
mount kimbie basically epitomized that and i think this record is that literally and i think it's
shot in dalston i'm not sure but um crooks and lovers like perfect perfect perfect carbonated is
the song carbonated is like the one that everyone knows but like
every song like tunnel vision like all of these songs are so so well put together
i want to kind of keep it still kind of uk but i know there's a streets record in here i can't
find it but in the same vein SBTRKT legend i don't have to say too much about SBTRKT
but i've actually got had the pleasure of working with SBTRKT and um just started a whole whole
wave i think this is really what introduced the more uk like electronic sound to the rest of the
world you know because wildfire just went crazy no pun intended it went it caught fire like in
a big way what was it like working with him it was working with SBTRKT was it was a dream
because like i i listened to him growing up so it was it was it was a cool experience i
learned a lot and we still talk to this day so yeah big up SBTRKT bloc party silent alarm
you know like i'm like an inner city kid more of a hip-hop grime kid r b et cetera and so like
bloc party was one of the first bands that like helped me transition into listening to like i
don't know guitar music i guess is that i don't know how to like indie music i don't know
how you'd explain it but and this record was was like that transition so so there's like a bunch
of bands that helped like help me get into that kind of more side of of music but this one was
like rocked my whole shit i don't know if i'm allowed to swear but this this record blew my mind
when i heard this i i just my brain just went because like they the sound was like this math
rocky computer rock thing that sounded like it could be made on a computer but it was being
played by a band and i saw it live i remember finishing my exams and going to reading festival
and seeing that album live and then that even just took it to another level and i was just i
was obsessed obsessed obsessed and the cover is even cooler and i didn't
know that it came out of sub pop in america what are they on in the uk uh transgressive
yeah wicked wicked wicked wicked wicked album again like this is up there with like crooks
and lovers about how important it is to me around the same time like all my older cousins were like
all hip-hop people all rap heads but it was more like you know diplomats and G Unit and you know i'm
saying it's like more stereotypical rap and one of my best friends his older brother cut a cd
it was probably like 25 songs on this cd and about 15 of them were quasimoto the unseen this took me
into a whole nother side of hip-hop that i didn't know existed you know it wasn't even like
it wasn't a j dilla thing or nothing like it was straight like i heard quasimoto
and then the whole thing happened then like we went down the rabbit hole of like okay donuts, j dilla etc
etc but quasimoto was definitely the thing that like for me anyway that opened my eyes up so
yeah my madlib's a huge huge huge hero for me
this was the gateway drug to things like this
things like slum i mean at this point it's like anything we're just looking for anything that
j dilla's producing once i realized that oh wow like this man also again circling back to
like the more r&b stuff songs like climax it's an r&b song you know fall in love so it's like it
was him doing that and that made even a lot more sense to me so big up j dilla big up slum village
la planet savauge which is if you know madlib when you're a big madlib fan you know that a lot of
a lot of things that he sampled came from this
a lot of like just little bits and bobs came from this record and
the artwork as well is just phenomenal so i saw it in the store and i had to pick it out because
it's just beautiful and i don't haven't seen it anywhere else but yeah this is
just an extension of me being a big madlib fan i found my friend budgie's record in there
i was there while he made a lot of this and it's a really really
solid record more important than most people think but this is the record that
kanye took uh the sample for father stretch my hands
there's a record on here called the only power you're the only power and i think
budgie gave kanye quite a few samples but yeah my favorite song on here is called budgie's groove
when it comes to like really digging and finding samples in the middle of nowhere
budgie is your man so big up budgie he lives out here now so gang of four amazing band from leeds
amazing when i heard this it just it just lifted me whenever whenever i heard a
great band from the uk influenced a lot of shit i think they influenced people
like bloc party who then influenced me so the cycle continues stereolab
stereolab there's a song on here called breakage and it's one of the most beautiful things i have
ever heard in my life and when i heard it and when i still hear it it makes me tingle
french group um i think there's quite a few of them in this group
and yeah amazing and i love the artwork too is beautiful then lastly i'm gonna
finish with sault just because it's a bit more current i think this record came out in 2020
it's just some of the most amazing music being made today by a producer called inflo who's
probably the best british producer there is right now it's a producer on his and his i'm not sure
and his partner and she sings and he produces it and uh her name is cleo sol she just
put a record on herself but together it's they're sault you know they put out like two records a
year it's very like not to the drum of whatever the industry is doing you know i mean it's very
outside of whatever the industry is doing and it's music for the sake of making music like i mean
you can tell that like it's coming from such a pure place and the big messages
behind you can even see in the cover like there's a lot of messaging in there so
you have to go and go and listen to it and find out what that messaging is but yeah my favorite
track on here is there's a lot actually there's a song wildfires which is just but there's an
instrumental that finishes the record called pray up stay up and i wrote a free style to it actually
so big up uk london that's me there's some other shit but i can't be asked
thank you so much thank you we really appreciate you talking with us today thank you for having
me amoeba it's legendary this this this series so i'm glad i'm happy to be a part of it