Around a year ago on a Spotify rabbit hole adventure I came across an album by a group named Yussef Kamaal. The artwork on the cover of the album didn’t tell me anything about the band but the drummer told me all that I needed to know. The first song I heard from Yussef Kamaal was called Remembrance and it’s from their brilliant album called Black Focus. I didn’t go into my usual research self that morning because I didn’t want to leave the music. This album was beautiful. I didn’t know if it was new or old and it really didn’t matter because I loved it. I do like a lot of older jazz but hadn’t listened to too many modern jazz artists outside of BADBADNOTGOOD and Kamasi Washington. After listening to the Black Focus album for a good week straight I decided I needed to find out what this group was all about.
Read more