New Love

Mike Swoop is a producer who sometimes collaborates with MCs, but his debut album is far from your average rap record. New Love is a collection of smooth, quiet songs that are richly textured and pleasantly bass-heavy. The largely instrumental album fuses samples and synthesized sounds with live elements to create a lush aesthetic that manages to sound both complex and stripped-down.

Blending jazz, dub, and funk with a hip-hop mentality, the downtempo grooves recall the jazz-influenced rap output of the Native Tongues posse in the late '80s and early '90s. Twin Cities rappers Toki Wright, Big Quarters, Kavorkian, and Allpurpose provide the sole voices here (save for a few samples strewn throughout). For the most part, the MCs fit right in with Swoop's well-defined sound, with Mr. Wright in particular sounding comfortable over the slowed grooves of "Let It Go."

Song titles are sort of a moot point here, as the tracks blend together in the best way possible. (Fans of Thievery Corporation and chill music will definitely enjoy the ambience.) In the end, questioning whether New Love is "hip-hop" doesn't really matter—the album is less a genre exercise than a mood piece, a collection of deep cuts sure to provide the necessary head bobs in times of repose.