Rapper Skyzoo has always been a jazz fan. A quick look at his Instagram account, with its loving photos of classic jazz LP covers, will tell you that much. But despite frequently performing and recording with live musicians, the Brooklyn MC has never made a full project with a jazz band, until now.
Skyzoo's upcoming project The Bluest Note, out on April 24, was recorded with the Italian nu-jazz band Dumbo Station. Sky met them in 2017, on tour in Italy. They began a relationship that led to recording sessions in June of last year. And the end result lived up to the rapper's expectations.
"As much as I’ve incorporated my favorite genre of music with my other favorite genre of music, this is the first time I’ve been able to craft an entire project based on jazz production from top to bottom," Skyzoo told Complex. "From writing musical arrangements with them and having them bring them to life in the studio in Rome, Italy; it was a perfect union and execution of what I foresaw when I began to sketch out the project."
The first public taste of the project, which Complex is proud to premiere, is "Good Enough Reasons." It was, Skyzoo tells Complex, a surprisingly easy song to create.
"For 'Good Enough Reasons,' I’ve had this pattern in my head for awhile," he explained. "The tone of how the drums play out, and this hybrid of a smooth but melancholy but cool but blatant feel on a beat, and letting the lyrics take the same road. I came up with an arrangement and expressed it to the band and they took it and ran 100MPH with it. Once the beat was done, my pen just kinda flew on its own accord. It went where it wanted, right along with that hybrid of a beat. The outcome was what you hear when you press play on this record. It was the last record I wrote for the project and it’s easily one of my favorites."
You can check out "Good Enough Reasons" below. The Bluest Note will available for pre-order at Spotify and Apple Music starting at midnight.
