October brings a new artist to the blog / pod, and one that has created one of my albums of th year, Dahi’s Black Boy (Alternative). Cards on the table, until a few months ago I had no idea who Dahi was, though he has been present in my music sphere for many years.
Dahi has spent the last decade making other artists sound unforgettable. He produced Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees” and has helped shape records for Drake, SZA, Travis Scott, Vampire Weekend and countless others. His name might not be familiar to everyone, but his fingerprints are all over modern music.
Now, on Black Boy (Alternative), he steps out from behind the curtain. The question is whether a producer known for elevating other people can create a world compelling enough to stand on its own?
The answer arrives almost immediately. This isn’t a conventional producer album, but something far stranger and more ambitious. Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Vince Staples, Channel Tres, Moses Sumney, Amber Mark and others appear throughout, yet nobody sounds like they’ve simply dropped in for a feature. They sound like they’ve entered Dahi’s world — and that world feels unlike anything else being released right now.
That’s what makes the album so good: it doesn’t really feel like a producer album at all.
You know the type: famous producer, enormous guest list, a succession of big-name artists doing what they normally do while the producer provides the backdrop.
This isn’t that.
This is Dahi’s album. He’s front and centre, and everyone else seems to have joined him for the ride. Kendrick appears on “How To Pray”, Childish Gambino on “Running”, while Vince Staples and Channel Tres feature on the opening track. Moses Sumney, Amber Mark, Fousheé, Baby Rose, Ravyn Lenae, Elmiene and others weave in and out of the record.
Rather than sounding like a collection of separate collaborations, they somehow sound like they’ve joined the same band.
That’s the magic of it.
Dahi has described the music as something close to “African Radiohead”, and the more you listen, the more you understand what he means. There’s hip-hop, obviously, but also 90s alternative rock, West African rhythms, soul, jazz and electronic textures. Guitar is everywhere, but rarely in the way you expect.
There’s something wonderfully unhurried about the album. It isn’t chasing a trend or trying to prove how clever it is. It sounds like someone finally getting the opportunity to make the record that has been sitting inside their head for years.
And apparently, it has been sitting there for a long time. Dahi has spoken about the project taking around twelve years to become what it is, with the idea dating back to his time at Def Jam. The album was reportedly finished more than two years ago and then quietly waited for its release.
That somehow makes the finished record even more satisfying.
Black Boy (Alternative) doesn’t sound like an album trying to catch up with the moment.
It sounds like it has waited for its moment.
“Who Are You” is an incredible introduction. “How To Pray” brings Kendrick into Dahi’s strange, beautifully constructed universe. “Running” with Childish Gambino feels effortlessly cool, while the groove of “Rest of Your Life” is impossible to ignore. Then there are quieter moments like “Drowning”, where the production is given room to breathe and you begin to realise just how much is happening beneath the surface.
There’s a looseness to it, but also incredible detail.
You can hear Radiohead’s influence in the space and Fela Kuti’s in the rhythm, but these influences never overwhelm the record. They’re ingredients in a sound that Dahi ultimately makes his own.
And maybe that’s the point. For years, he’s been the person helping other artists sound like themselves. Now he’s made a record where everyone else has had to sound a little bit like him.
It’s modern without feeling disposable. Experimental without being inaccessible. Familiar without ever becoming predictable.
Most importantly, it’s a joy to listen to from beginning to end.
I come here as I often do, trying to follow some very good points and some deep love for an album that I can’t quite figure out yet.
I LOVE that you chose this Nolan, because while you could say “oh here’s Nolan with a hip-hop album” it’s really not that template, at all. It’s something else entirely, at times only hip-hop adjacent, but nothing more.
I’d never heard of Dahi before, and the tracks on the playlist you’d sent, I don’t think I’d ever knowingly listened to, bar the only non hip-hop/r’n’b track on there (Vampire Weekend). So I come to this colder than a witch’s tit. But that’s a great place to approach things from a lot of the time. A clean slate.
And my, it was nothing like I’d expected (as Joey says, even if I didn’t know what I expected). From the opening track, the intricate guitar layers of Who Are You, with a host of collabs from Vince Staples to Amber Rose, it was fascinating. How could something this fully-formed drop out of the sky with such richness, such seamless collaborations across the tracks, with this incredible guitar skills running right through it like Dahi’s name in a stick of rock?
The fact you’d nodded to how long it was in the making really figures Nolan, because it feels like a real vision all of its own. What genre is it? Who knows? Who cares? Future r’n’b? Psychedelic hip-hop? Time machine soul? God knows. But it’s so good to see a ‘producer’ album that showcases the producer’s soul rather than a ‘look at my rolodex’ (ok, boomer) set of how cool my mates are.
It sounds like nothing else I’ve heard, for sure. Which we all love, a genre-bending/creating record. But I do hear the ‘African Radiohead’ thing, and it’s not pejorative, I think it’s justified. Just listen to Who Are You and then the opening bar of Radiohead’s Faust Arp on In Rainbows and you can see the lineage. But this isn’t throwing shade on Dahi and him picking bars from someone else. It’s taking the vibe from amazing guitar work and doing something singular with it. Dahi’s take on it is more launguid, rubbery, warm, and hazy. So anyone saying ‘doesn’t this sound like Weird Fishes’ is just being a dick really. Massive salute to the Fela energy (Tony Allen’s shuffling brilliance is all over the percussion), but again, it’s not pastiche or even a tribute, it’s taking the layers as inspiration and doing something singular with it. But as Joey says, it goes to many more places than that.
There’s so much to love about this and how it sounds before you even get to lyrics. There are huge names on there, but they all do something that sounds quite in line with this record, rather than phoning it in, Snoop-style. All of the names add textures and interesting angles and layers. I find it interesting that Dahi only appears fully solo on one track – the propulsive Rest Of Your Life, that echoes Fela more than anywhere else – when it feels he could’ve done more on his own here, but then what a cast it is with him.
He is such a creative that this is a whole vision – you only have to watch the incredible videos that support the record, like Find Me – shot in half-screens in black and white. There’s a fully-realised universe here.
There is a but…. which continues to frustrate me. Despite its brilliance, I am not reaching for it. Every time I listen I love it. I marvel at the skill, the musicality, the virtuosity, but it doesn’t have its hooks into my head…… yet. Does it run out of steam a bit? Is it front-loaded? Perhaps.
Let’s see where we are in 5 days.