Assimilations

Album Review

On his debut album, Assimilations, Zakee Kuduro has assimilated a variety of musical influences, nearly all of them dance-related. Zakee was born and raised in Philadelphia, but that doesn't stop him from murmuring in French throughout the downtempo opener, "Dark Crystal," while the rest of the album finds him singing and rapping in English. This is appropriate to his self-named style of music, "Ku Ku Bass," which he defines as West African dance music. In practice, that music is built out of deep rhythm tracks suggesting a drums‘n'bass style, over which Zakee intones his vocals, sometimes in patter form, although "Shadow," "Double Up," and "The Rise" have sufficiently fast-paced wordplay that they can be called raps. Sometimes, the music bears Caribbean elements, such as "Push the Power" and "Double Up," which boast steel drum-like percussion. And some songs have a pop feel, such as "Take It Easy." But the whole point is that Zakee is drawing from various dance rhythms to create his own bass-heavy assimilations, meant to appeal to a broad range of hip-hop, rap, and world music fans.