Papi is a new album from New York based, Dominican hip hop artist Slakpapi. The album has a very distinctive, funky, sometimes dreamlike sound. In fact, the opening track is actually titled Funky. A good way to describe the ambiance of the intro song is that it’s like listening to an ethereal conversation going on in someone’s head while they’re playing an old school video game. One of the strongest tracks on this release is Sanctuary. In this mini masterpiece, Slakpapi demonstrates he has real skills, demonstrating an impeccable sense of timing and razor sharp delivery. It’s also somewhat refreshing that he’s willing to sing naturally at times without a ton of processing and autotune, and his voice gets the job done just fine. Sanctuary is delightfully melodic and extremely catchy. In my opinion it’s the song with the most potential to score a hit. There’s a surprising amount of versatility on these recordings though, as the artist experiments with all kinds of different song formats, pacing, effects, delivery styles and backing music. No two songs sound quite the same, but all are fun, lively and ocassionally feature memorable titles like Lambo Swervin’. Papi is both an entertaining and respectable album. There’s ample talent on display here.
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