Mixtape Review--Kooley is High: Get lifted (lyrically, musically)

Kooley is High, Get lifted (lyrically, musically)

By: K.Scribe

“Arm strong like Lance my pen peddling/my Tour de France is a war of chance heard ‘til I’m touring France/And exploring foreign land/ bridging gaps, giving dap to foreign fans/exchange cash for the raps I’m pouring in/ to the beat so sweet like iced tea/ down south North Carolina a slight breeze.” -“Day Keeper,” Tab-One of Kooley High

And that’s just it. Kooley High is to listeners what sweet tea is to an estranged southerner returning home. As if we needed proof that urban soil doesn’t grow all muses, the six member group hails from the Raleigh, North Carolina. Tab-One, Charlie Smarts, Rapsody, Foolery (producer), Sinopsis (producer), and DJ ill Digitz are the voices and hands crafting the sound. The result is a composition dipped in the roots of 90’s boom bap, along with jazz, soul, annotated with a mellow southern drawl. The mixtape, Kooley is High, dawns several remixes that music fiends know and love, and offering a platform for Kooley to really transform into emcee-poets.

In the title track, “Kooley is High” DJ ill Digitz and producers, Sinopsis and Foolery use a score that captures the essence of the new cool—a confident, intelligent way of seeing sound and emanating poetry. This blending is definitely the pattern and not the exception for the mixtape. It’s evident that these six not only love what they do, but love doing it together. Thus, creating a progeny of tracks that reflect growth, passion, talent, and hard work. Giving props to those who inspire them, you’ll hear references to Tribe Called Quest, Talib Kweli, Thelonius Monk, J Dilla, Common, both verbally and musically.

Listen for the tone setting track, Kooley High’s remix of The Foreign Exchange’s “Daykeeper.” Already equipped with a beat that stirs the soul, Kooley High delivers wordplay that matches the song’s steeping intensity. What’s more is they perfect the art of storytelling in this track, not by telling, but showing listeners the difficulty of the path that is chosen through a series of powerful lyrical deliveries by Tab-One, Smarts, and Rapsody. Kooley is careful to let open ears know that this challenge is met with a wit and depth fit for warring with obstacles. As evidenced in Smart’s verse,

And I will do all nighters to make my songs tighter than what y’all writing to make them broads light up../They say to make benjamins improve your producin’/then maybe then you’ll move in more units/I’m a friend with a pen for those who go through it. I grinned every since, my cents I throw two in.

The third emcee, Rapsody, continues to reinforce Kooley’s presence by easing her verse into the sound with,
Cause when the day is gone your favorite song on repeat will still be standing here like docks on the beach/can’t peace us good-bye we are so out of reach/Y’all kindergarten children/we are who professors teach/so each one turn your stereos up/and each one turn your stereos up.
Kooley High’s realness cannot be denied, as Smarts tells us in “Daykeeper,” I said we’re the future face it/It ain’t no fakin in the statements that we makin.

Perhaps this is true because something sustaining stays with you after hearing Kooley’s music because they stimulate more than the hip hop head bob (as if it needed to do more). It also begs us to listen to our own dreams and act to make them reality. So, make room for Kooley High on your iPods and your consciouness, because in the transient culture of music, Kooley High offers immediate relief, much like the way summer breezes and sweet tea rescue us from southern heat.

Additional Tracks to Listen for:
“Flow Glow” (Kooley High Remix)
“Getting Up” (remix)
“Soldier” (Kooley High Remix)
Jacques Costeau
“Due Process” (Kooley High Remix)
“G Building” (Foolery Kooley High Remix)
..basically the whole tape, on repeat.

DL it here.

-k.scribe
Keeping the pen bleeding and the cursor blinking…