Chris DeLine

Guru’s recently released Jazzmatazz Volume 4 has received a strange mixture of poor reviews including one such from XXL, “Lacking the legendary instrumentalists, such as Donald Byrd and Roy Ayers, that anchored previous Jazzmatazz projects, Vol. 4 plays out more like a scattershot compilation than a fully realized thematic disc.” Without having listened to the album though it’s hard to believe that a Solarproduced collection featuring the likes of Slum Village, Common, Blackalicious and Damian Marley can be so off the mark. Nonetheless “State of Clarity” continues the trend that both Common and Guru have historically laid down, that being putting their environment into context and idealistically rising above it…well, that and they’re no strangers to the wild funk that illuminates the track.

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]