Kaytranada Dismantles Dance Music and Pieces It Together His Own Way on ‘BUBBA’

Adi Mehta

Kaytranada grew up to the pulse of percussion-heavy music, making his way from Port Au Prince, Haiti to Montreal and taking immediate inspiration from hip-hop hits of the day, with an ever-present affinity for more unhinged rhythms. Dabbling with basic software led to a proper Soundcloud presence, and in a flash, Kay was churning out remixes for illustrious names. His debut album “99.9%” featured a staggering roster of guest artists, including Syd and Anderson .Paak, and made him the first artist in either an urban or electronic genre to win a Polaris Music Prize. For his follow up, “BUBBA,” Kay concentrates his effort on a house sound, although that should be interpreted in the broadest of terms. He recruits a cast of characters that outweighs even that of his debut, and heads boldly forward with a set of mobilizing tracks that couldn’t be mistaken for the work of any other producer.  

Opener “Do It” begins like snapshots of a party, with Kaytranada teasing snippets of a beat, cloaked in ambient dance noise. It’s an effective statement of intent, making it clear from the onset that he plans to do things his own way. In his case, the grooves he settles into are so infectious that he can stop and trail off on whims as often as he likes, without really sacrificing any dancefloor appeal. His trademark, boldly off-grid percussion is immediately on display, and the cheerful, titular exclamation repeats, setting the stage for a nonstop festivity. It would be a bit of an understatement to use the word “swing” when describing Kay’s rhythms. Come “2 the Music,” he’s already pushing the limits of how designedly sloppily he can lay down drum tracks, disorienting you for just a split second, before catching you in a groove, and making it all the more satisfying. Over mellow chords, Iman Omari’s processed vocal subtly shifts shapes sporadically, placing accents at certain moments. There’s an absolute fire bassline driving the track all along, and when a new beat emerges around it at the end, it’s a brilliant cathartic release.

“Go DJ” begins like a consummately dusty loop of jazzy jamming, hinting at the Madlib productions that Kaytranada has often cited as an influence. SiR sings on the track, letting percussive instincts guide his melody to the point of almost rapping, and sounding, at moments, a bit like Q-tip with his high-pitched, laidback flow. Chatter, hollers, and various incidentals fill up the mix, serving to enhance retro qualities already inherent in the music, by imitating an aged recording, even as the main elements are in high fidelity. The end result is a sound that blends eras and their associated sensibilities in an exhilarating way. “99.9%” had plenty of trippy sound candy, and this makes its way into “Gray Area,” with a beat based around prominent swooshes, patterned with crisp clicks and thuds that strike and trail off. Mick Jenkins, who collaborated before with Kay on the song “What Am I To Do,” shows up, stepping outside his usual role as rapper, and singing languidly over spacey synths, merely intimating his vocals and nudging them along in a way that suits the music.

While the album consists mainly of house-based tracks, the outre instrumental hip-hop that Kaytranada is nearly as well known for makes its way into little interludes, such as “Puff Lah,” which sounds readymade for a breakdance routine played in slightly slow motion. Upon “10%,” the well-chosen lead single, it sounds as if all the teased sounds have come together and clicked. There’s an irresistible groove, built over a classic breakbeat, with the type of attention to detail that makes one strategically placed handclap absolutely hit the spot. At moments, the track echoes the bohemian lounge stylings of some early Will I Am productions. Kali Uchis is the perfect vocalist to rest atop this, singing with a natural, free command. For an album in which lyrics generally take the backburner, the words standout on this song, with Uchis managing to fashion a flirty singalong out of a dialogue about finances, singing, “You keep on takin’ from me, but where’s my 10 percent?”

Kaytranada continues to create vibes that stop you in your tracks, only to keep you going. On “Need It,” he goes to town with synths, showing no reservation about proprieties concerning relative volumes, structure, or anything really. The slapdash rawness is irresistible. Masego provides vocals on this one, and allows the rhythms of the melodies to guide his rapping, a rather novel approach that adds even more color to an already vivid mix. Then comes “Taste,” a more lounge-ey, dim-lit affair, with hard-hitting snaps over a kickdrum pulse, and VanJess providing an impeccably smooth, spread-out vocal, as the beat pauses and builds. Estelle, another singer perfectly suited for the aesthetics on display, follows suit on “Oh No.” This time, the drums are so off-kilter that when she sings, “Uh-oh, no,” it could hardly better fit the scene. Bold synths enter, and it’s all incredibly elemental and primal.

Kay achieves much of his impact through his liberal use of diverse, organic percussion, and this is especially noticeable on “What You Need, with the prominent hand drums adding a vaguely tribal feel, with massive wallops of bass. Charlotte Day Wilson provides crystalline vocals that start off serene and end up soaring and transcendent. Next, Kay goes Caribbean on “Vex OH,” recruiting three vocalists to take turns over a beat that mixes and matches defining sounds of sundry tropical forms. Eight9FLY leads the melody, and Ari PenSmith and GoldLink drop verses, together making for one of the album’s most dynamic hodgepodges of personality. “Scared to Death” starts with almost the same beat, until insistent snare enters, and the mix gets muffled, taking you outside the club, to listen in through brick walls. It’s a classic DJ move to let a track run like this for a few measures, then slowly open up the sound. But Kay, of course, takes it to the next level, letting the noise pile on and fill itself with dirty feedback, making it all the more gratifying when it finally explodes, before mutating, somewhere along the line, into a minimal stomp of serious funk synths riffing off a skeletal pulse.

On “Freefall,” Durand Bernarr sings, “I just wanna let go, freefall,” and it sounds just about right, the unadulterated expression of full dancefloor abandon, over a concerted racket of dismantled parts and whooshes whizzing by an insistent pulse. “Culture,” recruits Teedra Moses, who starts sultrily singing, “xoxo,” and ends up doubling up on attitude for possibly the best lyric of the album, “This is not a life; it’s a culture, nigga,” over dancefloor haze and drum sounds that could hardly be more in your face. Tinashe, fresh from her game-changing latest album “Songs For You,” makes another invaluable contribution on “The Worst In Me,” setting the double-edged refrain, “You bring out the worst in me” to a tight elastic beat that expands and contracts in a whirlwind of sound.

“September 21” echoes the productions that Kaytranada churned out on releases like his “Instrumental Hip-Hop Is Dead” mixtape. Brief, trippy, understated bits like these lend themselves to interludes, and serve that purpose to great effect on this album, giving the sensation of traveling between different rooms in a club. Finally comes “Midsection,” featuring none other than Pharell WIlliams. If previous tracks sonically created the environment of a party, this outdoes them all. The entire song is full of ambient chatter and commotion, along with goofy shoutouts of “Hey hey hey,” interspersed with Williams singing, “Don’t you love it?” The multiple phases of the track continue to transport you through different stages of an ongoing festivity, punctuated with such priceless lines as “I know I’ve seen power when I’ve seen her midsection.”

While “99.9%” captured restless creativity darting in various directions, “BUBBA” showcases the same spark held up to target for greater impact. On the most obvious level, the new album contains far less overt hip-hop excursions, and falls quite safely under the general banner of house. Still, such categorization is laughably reductive, as even a scant few seconds of Kaytrananda’s music makes clear. Vintage house and lo-fi experimental hip-hop are among the prominent elements in the mix. Hand drums and a fierce resistance to rigid programming gives the music a quality all of its own. The songs are loose and free, transcending space and time, bold in their madcap whims, yet consistently inviting to the dancefloor. 

“BUBBA” is available Dec. 13 on Apple Music.