stumbled upon this one at a record shop! judged the book by its cover and was pleasantly correct. this era was a goldmine for r&b and soul.
it's a very smooth, night-timey listen. it's fascinating to see how the neo-soul movement of the time made its waves even all the way to france. You can hear a little bit of erykah, a little sade, a little inner city groove. Sounds like brown leather and incense smoke.
In addition to the soul, les nubians combines traditional african sounds with french writing—providing another lens into the music of the diaspora. it catches me off guard sometimes because i'm nodding my head to the same conventions i'm used to then all of a sudden there's this crazy merge going on with the instrumentation and i'm like oop okay guess we dancin now? oh??
overall, super fun listen and i'm glad i gave it a try! some tracks get a bit too lost in the groove for my taste, but even those are treats for contributing to the album's total atmosphere.
