Laíz approaches her debut album, Ela Partíu, with relish. That much is evident in the very name of her 20-person ensemble, the New Love Experience, and the sheer volume of music she puts forth in this single package. Quality, though, is in even greater abundance than quantity here, and the love that resounds in Laíz’s work here is brilliantly complex, not an overly romantic sentiment but instead a set of reflections, critiques, and other accounts of the journeys she and her collaborators have made in life.
Laíz hails from São Paulo and counts among her compatriots here Sudanese rapper Zeyo Mann, Jembaa Groove co-founder Eric Owusu from Ghana, and many other musicians and producers who, like Laíz, have moved from states in the global south to Hildesheim, Germany, where Ela Partíu came into being. In their music, love is intertwined with justice, freedom, loss, and everyday acts of revolution, and that sounds like a scintillating mix of hip-hop, jazz, and deep soul.
Laíz is a tremendous talent, magnetic as she conjures a sense of being in short opener “Hues”, bounces at high speed through “Jongo”, and plays it cool on “Skrevi Lá”. She could take the spotlight alone with no problem; her delivery is bold, and her lyrics–about migration, inequities, roots, and ritual–sophisticated. The path of community, though, ends up being the wiser one. Zeyo Mann brings a fire to “Jongo” that matches Laíz’s perfectly, the two of them speaking up in unstoppable tandem against the violence of imperialism. Owusu appears more often, lending his smooth verses to the mix in luscious “Trimegistus” and soothing in the coda of compassionate “Mena”, among other appearances.
Perhaps one of the most mesmerizing vocal features comes from multitalented Nana Kahle. Featured throughout Ela Partíu, often giving an ethereal dimension to the backing sounds, Kahle’s recitations on the final track, “Chame Me”, are profound (“The ancestors are calling / Calling to get back to / Where humans were divine / Connected to the high and I”) and make the album’s last seven minutes incredibly transcendent.
All these human voices swirl together amid a warm sea of additional instrumentation. At this forefront is some particularly lovely brass, with musicians Pachakuti and Cito Kaling on saxophones and Daniel “El Congo” Allen on trumpet. Pachakuti also takes on other instrumental duties from time to time and co-produces the album with fellow multi-instrumentalist young.vishnu. A host of other artists play keyboards, percussion, guitar, and bass, all flowing together with skill and apparent ease.
Throughout the introductory track, “Hues”, Laíz’s voice, artificially doubled and lowered, weaves in and out of audibility between sirens, school bells, synth pulses, and staccato horns. She speaks about feelings of placelessness and movement, culminating in a philosophical climax: “I am strong because I love / I am untouchable / Because I am way more than a body with a name.” Throughout Ela Partíu, an album named in part for iconoclast Tim Maia’s song of the same name and in part for its straightforward evocation of active departure–”she left”–Laíz makes clear just how much more she is: strong, tender, and an outstanding new figure in globally-minded hip-hop.