Since offering his first
Stones Throw
album,
Hud Dreems
, in 2015,
Glen Boothe
has snared a Grammy nomination through his contribution to Album of the Year candidate
To Pimp a Butterfly
(for which he co-produced "Momma"), joined
Anderson .Paak
under the name
NxWorries
, and continued to supply his growing base with dozens of smaller-scale digital releases.
Boothe
's second solo
LP,
1988
, obviously could not, as his label alleges with a wink, be based on recordings the producer made the year he was born, when he encountered an E-mu SP-12 sampling drum machine. While it's even more tantalizing to imagine the result of
restricting his sources to nothing but recordings from the titular year -- sampling classics by the likes of
BDP
,
Guy
Pebbles
, and
Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud
-- this is lacking neither imagination nor creativity, and is another transfixing exhibition of the beatmaker's command. The tracks are a little longer on average but still rarely exceed two minutes. What few tracks eclipse the mark never drag. "amansloveislife_keepon," one of two bright moments bringing back vocal trio
Kut Klose
(1995), coasts in a state of bliss induced by
Patrice Rushen
's electric piano, while the four-and-a-half-minute "minding_my business," similarly uplifted and rooted in sophisticated funk, is actually a backdrop for free-and-easy vocalists
Durand Bernarr
and
Rose Gold
. Among the shorter cuts, there's a dusty soul strutter graced by
.Paak
, and other beats twist, stammer, and glide, cutting across genres, decades, and moods, smoothed out with transitions involving humorous interview segments, movie clips, and interjections as often as gentle fading. ~ Andy Kellman