Ever since the CD player stopped working in my car a month ago, I’ve been forced to listen to old cassettes. It’s been a really good journey to rediscover all of this old music that I used to be bonkers over and realize that I’m still in love with it.
One of the best tapes that I recently came across today is Things Fall Apart by the Roots. It’s an amazing book (learn something young folks) and an even better album. So now that I’m on my Roots kick, I’m glad to discover the news that hip-hop’s greatest band released a free EP to the world earlier this week. It’s not as good as the free EP that the homie Gabriel Teodros just dropped, but it’s still quality. The name of the project is called Sandwiches and was created basically as lead-in music that the group plays on the Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon show when they’re coming out of commercials. They’ve already written 1,000 of these little ditties, and ?uestlove uploaded 22 of them to the web recently. Another blog called All The Way Live turned those mp3s into an EP, and voila.
What I especially like about Sandwiches is that it’s based around jazz. It’s not straight ahead jazz, nor is it the Do You Want More?!!!??! jazz-hop that they started out with in the early ’90s. It’s all lean, quick, jazzy, and fresh. And the best song on here is named after Detroit’s fallen Slum Village member, Baatin. There’s also two core collaborations with jazz greats Chick Corea and George Benson. You can download the project over here.
