Gonja Sufi, A Sufi And A Killer
Featured Album
Call him hip-hop's Captain Beefheart
Sumach Valentine is Gonja Sufi, a San Diego rapper currently based in Las Vegas. He's a character: a yoga instructor with the mouth of a sailor, he talks a lot about spiritualism and balance, hinting at a considerable darkness in his upbringing, a violence he keeps at bay. He's a surfer, and if his debut album is shot through with a weird sense of longing, it might be because he's so far from the ocean. In interviews, he's described bringing seawater back from California and pouring it over parched Nevada soil, and you can hear something similar in his music, as dry, scratchy drum breaks soak up fluid streams of jazz, soul and even rock 'n' roll; his own voice shape-shifts between cracked gravel and a fluid falsetto.
Despite his history in the San Diego rap scene, Gonjasufi comes across more as a singer than a rapper, flitting between an agonized drawl and a lullaby hush. He's a hillbilly rocker on "She Gone," and he channels Snoop Dogg on "Dust;" it sounds like he's swallowed a kazoo on "I've Given." Much of the time, he explores the melody as though he were trying to feel his way out of a cardboard box, gingerly feeling his way across the changes.
Most of the album was produced by the Gaslamp Killer, an experimental hip-hop musician from San Diego; Flying Lotus produced the keening "Ancestors," and Warp artist Mainframe provided beats for four more tunes. But the album's range is such — from the lo-fi punk of "Stardustin'" to the Indian influence on "Cowboyz and Indians," and from the stoned soul of "Change" to the country-fried "She Gone" — that it would be possible to believe that half a dozen producers were involved. It's also focused enough to mistake for the work of a single musician, thanks largely to the gritty, overdriven, deliberately lo-fi quality that permeates every track. And despite the multiple producers, it really is — no other vocalist could inject the same particular sense of presence into these beats. Call him hip-hop's Captain Beefheart.
