B-Side Guys

In the ever-expanding universe of genre-blurring collaborations, the meeting of minds between Afro Grunge pioneer Boko Yout and electronic virtuoso boerd feels less like a calculated commercial gambit and more like an act of cosmic creative inevitability. On “Sooky Sooky,” the lead single from their forthcoming “Griot” EP, the Stockholm-based duo conjure a mesmerizing sonic dreamscape that feels equal parts experimental hip-hop odyssey and melancholic pop reverie.

Drawing inspiration from the West African concept of the “griot” – a kind of oral storyteller, poet, and troubadour – Boko Yout and boerd have crafted a track that feels less like a conventional song than a vivid, impressionistic journey through the labyrinthine corridors of the heart and psyche. Over a hypnotic backdrop of shimmering synths, spectral vocal samples, and languid, trip-hop-inflected rhythms, Boko Yout weaves a poetic tapestry of longing, loss, and existential contemplation.

“In writing, I’ve been honest and vulnerable,” Boko Yout explains of his lyrical approach on the EP. “It’s a documentation of a larger grieving process. I delve into issues of addiction, relationships, and contemplations of death.” And indeed, there’s a palpable sense of emotional rawness and unvarnished truth-telling that permeates every line of “Sooky Sooky.” Boko Yout’s flow is less a conventional rap delivery than a kind of dreamlike incantation, his words bleeding into the ether like wisps of memory and regret.

But if Boko Yout’s lyrics and vocals provide the track’s bleeding heart, it’s boerd’s production that serves as its haunted, otherworldly soul. Drawing on his love for ’90s trip-hop acts like Portishead and Massive Attack, the Swedish producer crafts a sonic landscape that feels both nostalgic and futuristic, familiar yet alien. The interplay of delicate Rhodes piano chords, ghostly vocal samples, and subtly propulsive beats creates an atmosphere of eerie, almost narcotic beauty – the perfect complement to Boko Yout’s spectral musings.

Ultimately, “Sooky Sooky” is a track that defies easy categorization or analysis. It’s a song that seems to exist in the liminal spaces between genres, emotions, and states of consciousness – a fever dream of heartache and catharsis, confusion and clarity. In the hands of lesser artists, such an unabashedly experimental approach might come across as indulgent or impenetrable. But Boko Yout and boerd possess the rare ability to make the alien feel intimate, to imbue even the most abstract sonic explorations with a sense of raw, beating humanity.

So if you find yourself lost in the labyrinth of your own heart and mind, adrift on the currents of memory and regret, let “Sooky Sooky” be your guide. This is music as cartography of the soul – a map of the ineffable, the inscrutable, and the beautifully strange.