Tony Allen

★★★★ There Is No End BLUE NOTE FRANCE. CD/DL/LP

Last studio outing of the man who put the beat in Afrobeat is a rapper’s delight.

Before his sudden death in 2020 Tony Allen expressed his desire to give voice to a new generation of rappers, livejamming a series of beats he heard hidden within hip-hop’s most iconic tracks. Those singular takes from Fela Kuti’s ex-Africa 70 bandleader are well matched here; Nah Eeto’s mellow, Swahili-steeped delivery and Sampha The Great’s fleet wordplay riding a peerless light jumble of snaredriven grooves, micro-rolls and fills, with much ghosting beneath the surface. Whether it’s more forceful, electronically detailed efforts with The Koreatown Oddity and Danny Brown or the bristling monotones of Jeremiah Jae and poet Ben Okri (the latter with a masterful Skepta chorus earworm), these tracks feel more like intimate conversations, with Allen’s boundless curiosity shining through.