Blinky Bill has released his third studio album 'We Cut Keys 2.' Mostly made in Nairobi during the onset of the pandemic, the album continues in the exploratory and experimental nature of the previous projects while tapping into traditional tribal drum sounds, electronic music, hip hop and Jazz.
The album has a host of impressive features including Ghanaian singer/rapper Fuse ODG, American singer/ rapper GoldLink, Jamaica’s Shauna Fung Yee alongside Kenya’s music legend Maji Maji, rapper Jovie Jovv, jazz trumpeter Owuor Arunga, frequent collaborators of Blinky Bill: Idd Aziz, Muthoni The Drummer Queen and Lisa Oduor Noah, among many others.
The opening single of the album “Dracula” is an urgent call for the world to unite and ‘Get Up Stand Up’ for their rights.
This track shows a signature bounce that overall sonically marks a departure from the previous project ‘Everyone’s Just Winging It And Other Fly Tales’.
Second single “Get The Paper” is signature Blinky Bill, a cocktail of Funk, Hip-Hop and Jazz, the visuals for this single are in Blinky’s opinion the highpoint of his visual career. If you have seen his visual journey or heard of it - you know this is a call to rush over to watch the video.
A chance meeting in Ghana led to Blinky Bill and Fuse ODG (a pioneer of taking Afrobeats to the world) making a party track “Constant K” - where Afrobeats meets Nairobi.
Just before COVID, GoldLink was in Nairobi to perform and a sonic brotherhood of sound was fused between, leading to a bump of a collaboration in “Compare”.
It took Blinky Bill six years to work on ‘We Cut Keys 2’- a masterpiece mixed by legendary engineer Commissioner Gordon who has won several Grammy awards for his work on Lauryn Hill’s ‘Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, Amy Winehouse’s ‘Frank’ and Damian Marley’s ‘Welcome to Jamrock’.
Mastering of this album was left in the hands of Tony Dawsey who has mixed Jay-Z’s ‘Black Album’, ‘The Blueprint’, Whitney Houston’s ‘My Love Is Your Love’ and Jay Electronica ‘A Written Testimony’ and many more classic albums.
