Sampha - Process

Sampha’s debut album came at the beginning of the year and has since remained my go-to album to chill and drink tea with, a definite favorite of mine of 2017 no other R&B or even hip hop album has usurped since its release. Sampha has such an unfair advantage that I totally don’t mind though. Just as Meshuggah can play just about anything and it sounds monstrously heavy through their setup, Sampha could sing just about any set of lyrics and make them soothing; he could sing “Hammer Smashed Face” and I’d feel relaxed. While his unique and talented vocals are a major selling point and easy to write hypnogogic R&B to, he didn’t just phone it in or go vocally diva with a bunch of tasteless runs and show-off on this album. Process features hook upon soulful hook and sweet, memorable melodies all over its track list, which is solid at all its ten points. The introductory track, “Plastic 100°C”, is exemplary in its progressive style of composition and production. “No One Knows Me Like the Piano” takes a more classical and stripped back angle to Sampha’s soulfulness as he odes to his instrument and to all the expression he’s poured into it. “Incomplete Kisses” also highlights flatteringly Sampha’s slow, woeful, ballad-y side, but my favorite track has to be the head-nodding “Blood on Me”, which has such a catchy chorus I want to play it right now just thinking about it. All across these tracks is highly meticulous production of instrumentals aware of their shared motive in each song, nothing overblown or out of place. It’s like everything is coming straight from Sampha’s soul,and even though it’s not all his doing, it shows what effort was put into the project and how much care he himself put into crafting this album to represent his vision. With alternative R&B kind of succumbing to a lot of saturation with boring background-level trend-milking, the genre’s more devoted and hard-working artists like Sampha need and deserve this kind of recognition. I hope to hear a lot more from him in the coming future.

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