Yasiin Bey and Marvin Gaye get mashed together by Amerigo Gazawya’s The Return.
Shifting focus for the second installment of “Yasiin Gaye”, Amerigo aimed to highlight the often overlooked accomplishments of Marvin Gaye’s role as the producer.
“I wanted to build this side from more of Marvin’s original production work. He was doing a lot of what we do now, in terms of looping and pulling samples from other pre-recorded sessions decades before hip-hop made it common practice to do so. This also gave me the room to feature other artist [Chuck Berry, The Temptations, Talib, etc.] and re-present those classic Mos [Def] versus in a new context.”
Soul Mates Series:
Amerigo Gazaway’s *Soul Mates* series continues the theme of his previous work in creating collaborations that never were. On the series’ latest installment, Amerigo unites Brooklyn rapper Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) and soul legend Marvin Gaye for a dream collaboration aptly titled “Yasiin Gaye”. Building the album’s foundation from deconstructed samples of Gaye’s Motown classics, Gazaway re-purposes the instrumentation into new productions within a similar framework. Carefully weaving Bey’s tangled raps and Gaye’s soulful vocals over his new arrangements, the producer delivers a quality much closer to an authentic collaboration than a lukewarm “mashup” album.
