Louis Kevin Selestin, known as Kaytranada is a Canadian musician, producer and DJ whose career has been active since 2010. He cooked his debut album 99.9% on a slow fire for two years and now, when the album is out, it is definitely going to cement his ‘’uprising star’’ status in the music scene.
After several mixtapes, I have started waiting for this hip hop artist to release his first full-length album since he described it as an abstract uptempo neo-soul with a plentitude of funk elements. I am not sure he took it in that direction.
99.9% is an electro hip hop album based on the bass music of American South whose featuring artists have taken him to the neo soul niche. That is how Craig David released one the best tracks in his career Got It Good.
The album opens with two instrumentals, one inspired by the interplanetary Daft Punk’s hit One More Time, while the other one is imbued by public transportation in Montreal. The following track is a collaboration with David Guetta and I was shocked that I have liked it so much. On the song called Together, AlunaGeorge sings an enchanting chorus after which GoldLink throws verse in a love song with the vintage house matrix.
Soul note continues on One Too Many with obscure MC Fonte, while the dark moments suffuse over Glowed Up With Anderson Paak. There are several downtempo tracks with similar sensibility that I was not able to differentiate, although I enjoyed them. My favorite is probably Lite Sports, a flirtatious funky beat enriched with the sample of the well known Brazilian singer Gal Costa from the tropical era.
The album closes with another house-based track Leave Me Alone and the song called Bullets which features Swedish duo Little Dragon.
Overall, Kaytranada has a bright future in front of him If he continues to pull out records like this.
