RP Boo's second album for Planet Mu cements his reputation as the founding father of the Chicago footwork scene, itself a direct descendant of the original house music created in the Windy City.
Across its 14 tracks, 'Fingers, Bank Pads & Shoe Prints' twitches with endless inventiveness and energy, finding Boo tinkering with vocal snatches as frequently as he skews the beats into ever-more queasily unusual formations, drawing from soul, soundtracks and classic dance music along the way. It's an effect that leaves you pleasantly unsure as to whether you're hearing some sort of skittering cut-up hip-hop take of classic house or a particularly sample-delic strain of late '80s dance music. The reality is that it's all of this, and none, all at once.
The album contains tracks recorded since his 2013 debut, 'Legacy', as well as earlier tracks that haven't surfaced before this. The highlight here is the opener '1-2D-20'2' with its nagging, insistent rhythm, sub-acid hook and the repeated phrase 'dynamic' emphasised so frequently that you begin to mishear the word.
The rapid ticks of 'Bang'n On King Dr.' list out street names – something that on face value feels banal. But like a lot of the samples on show here, Boo's trick is that he manages to turn the listener's attention away from the sampled words as they start to merge into one another, encouraging your focus toward the hop-scotch of infectiously deep beats that are the real driver.
Elsewhere, Boo slows the vibe down with the self-aggrandising and soulful closer 'B'Ware', whose vocal heaps ample praise upon its creator. But hey – when you can single-handedly create a scene and knock out tracks as mind-bendingly inclusive as this collection shows, I reckon you can afford to be as cocky as you want.
7/10
Words: Mat Smith
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