Obscure Music Spotlight: Ras G

Despite the urge to go "I'm steppin' in hotter this yeeeeear," no, it's not Ini Kamoze...

It IS, however, a cool beatmaker I recently discovered named Ras G. Don't know shit about him, quite frankly haven't done the research yet, but I already like him a lot, just on the strength of Beats of Mind.

As his low-eyed, smoke-blowin' ass on the album cover may indicate, this is a fairly laidback affair. It's all instrumentals, and many low-key. Ras G is a big fan of what I would call The Madlib Sound, a loping, beat-chasing-melody sort of gait, with a heavy dose of fuzzy background noise, warped-vinyl atmospherics and dub influence. [This may be jumping the gun, but he may just be Jamaican... let's do a little quick background research... well, fuck me, turns out our man is from the Western Sahara region of Africa, which is even cooler]

Beats of Mind is kind of like a cross between some of Madlib's Beat Konducta work and fellow Oxnard native Kankick, with a little more of a paranoid vibe running through things. I like it a lot. Definitely good for rolling around late-night in the ride.

I could hear a number of these instrumentals working for artists like Oh No, Guilty Simpson, Kool Keith, Sadat X, and really any underground New York rapper.

Keep an eye out for this cat, and check out some of his other work, including "Ghetto Sci Fi," a collab with Ras G and the Afrikan Space Program. He's listed on Amazon.com.