Diaspora (n):-
1. The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland.
2. The sophomore album of African-American rapper GoldLink released on June 12th 2019.
As hinted from the title, the DMV artist acknowledges there's a musical world outside of the United States and links up with his brothas and sistas from across the globe to explore what the black diaspora has to showcase.
Goldlink experiments with a wide-range of different genres from trap to afrobeats to bossa nova/jazz to reggae/dancehall to rnb and of course hip hop. The majority of the artists he works with are UK-based such as Lola Rae, Maleek Berry and WSTRN for example. Gold made sure to Link with his DMV peeps though, most notably Pusha T. Outside of that, he also works with one of Nigeria's favourite son's Wizkid and even Hong Kong artist Jackson Wang who is the only non-black artist to make an appearance.
Diaspora kicks off with Joke Ting where Goldlink flaunts over an upbeat instrumental about his success. In addition to the balla talk, he added a bit of hood talk and even some philantropy talk on the 24-bar track. The UK's Ari Pensmith provided a nice chorus.
While the first 3 tracks do sound like trap, each song has a different type of feel to it. Maniac had that traditional menacing, gassed vibe that I expect to hear from a trap tune while the Khalid-assisted Days Like This had a RnB feel to it. He doesn't nail down one particular topic at this point and seemingly just spits about whatever. Be it money, warning the opps or sex.
Afrobeats is the first genre outside of hip-hop that you hear Goldlink dabble with. Both Zulu Screams and More are mad catchy and you'd have to be a soulless statue to not at least nod your head to these tracks. The features come from two British artists of West African descent in Maleek Berry and Lola Rae. Neither disappoint with their complimentary contributions. Bibi Bourelly (a German-born DMV resident of Morrocan and Haitian descent *exhales*) provided the outro on the former track in Lingala which was cool.
In between the hip-hop and trap, Goldlink hooks up with West London's WSTRN for the dancehall-influenced Yard. Even though Wizkid is arguably the face of Afrobeats, his collab with Goldlink was oddly enough a trap tune. It was good nonetheless.
Not departing too far from his hip-hop roots, the prominent genre on this 14-track album is trap and hip hop with sprinklings of international flava. In reverse the collabs are predominantly with people from outside of the US, especially the UK.
The main selling points of Diaspora aside from the 'concept' is the production. The majority of the beats, regardless of the genre or the vibe, were dope.
Also no feature went to waste on Diaspora. Other than the aforementioned contributors, Pusha T has been in beast mode all year and he did what he does best on Cokewhite; Tyler, the Creator proved he can still bar on U Say... The lesser known acts also impressed. Everyone brought something from their world to make this listen an enjoyable journey.
As far as lyrics go, GoldLink shows glimpses of his mic-skills potential. Had some cool internal and multi-syllabic rhyming here and there but it was relatively rare. The content was mainly on superficial topics such as balla talk and hood talk etc. His fast-tempoed flow is fresh however and this album is mostly about vibes and versatility. GoldLink gets a gold star on that.
All in all, this is not quite a classic but this is an enjoyable album with no weak link. I also commend GoldLink for showing the world a taste of what the black population can create when unified. I'll give this an 8.
FAVES
Beat- Tiff Freestyle
Verse- Maniac Verse 1
Feature- Pusha T
Track- U Say
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