Album Review: The Very Best - MTMTMK

The Very Best
MTMTMK
Rating: Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It

The second album from the duo of African-born singer Esau Mwamwaya and London based producer Radioclit has been drawing a lot of comparisons with Paul Simon's Graceland for its mixture of African rhythms and styles with more Western pop influences; in this case Euro dance genres. Where Graceland was decidedly a more experimental affair for Simon, using musical approaches not really addressed before in a big-budget pop album and striking out in more abstract lyrical directions, MTMTMK is not as cerebral, casting its nets towards the dancefloor.

This is most evident when the album kicks off with the furious blast of "Adani," taking tribal rhythms and pushing it forward with heavy thumps of drum machines, rave synths, and an inevitable dubstep breakdown. Using that as a kick-off point, "Kondaine" is a deliciously frothy summer jam with goofy synths, chanted lyrics, and an overall joyous approach.



MTMTMK tips its scales towards the pop side of things more often than not, blasting out breezy hit after breezy hit that, apart from the mostly African singing, would not be out of place firmly entrenched in the Top 10. "Yoshua Alikuti" shuffles under a Moombahton beat and squiggly synths,



"Rudeboy" is a fun call and response track thumping on hot rave synths and furious drum programming, and "We Ok," written by Bruno Mars, is a mid-tempo pop track with delightful interplay between the keyboards and some African guitar.



But MTMTMK truly shines where it detours from the pop area slightly, putting a little more thought and care into the arrangements. "Moto" takes its sunny base, and adds some darker dub-influenced percussion and keyboards to the mix; "Come Alive" has a melancholy undercurrent to the sunny melody; and especially "Mghetto" draws from a very bleak space, the dub rhythms rubbing up against the deep bass lines.

MTMTMK shows how far we have come from the Graceland days when it was such a novelty having a pop album immersed in world music to a place now where it is often commonplace to have a variety of international influences. In fact, I doubt I would have really even mentioned Graceland in this review had it not been beaten to death by every other reviewer. MTMTMK is simply a fun, summer pop record that happens to have a distinct African influence. There are some great tracks on here, and that is really where the main focus should be.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.