jr032 | blitz the ambassador - native sun | cd, vinyl & digital

A blindingly bright clarity drives Blitz the Ambassador. With a spot-on sense of flow, he name-checks Basquiat and Lumumba, evokes lovelorn sighs on Accra buses, émigré alienation, history’s shadows. All set to swirls of brass, distorted guitars, and the crackle and pop of old amplifiers.

With a lightning-fast mind, the political boldness of Chuck D, and the sixth groove sense of Fela Kuti, Ghanaian-born, New York-based MC, composer, and producer unleashes psychedelic Afrobeat colors and triple-time rhymes on Native Sun (Jakarta Records//; May 6, 2011). The album was sparked in Accra yet forged in the African diaspora.

Native Sun—as both musical journey—unfolds from a kaleidoscope of perspectives, with help from a Rwandan sweet soul singer Corneille, from sleek Francophone sirens Les Nubians, Netherlands’s #1 MC Pete Philly, Sweden’s finest Promoe of Looptroop who recorded his part while being Phnom Penh/Cambodia, Canada’s up and coming Shad, Nigerian world music star Keziah Jones and many more. Blitz even got a boost—including an invite to play at a packed Central Park SummerStage show—from Public Enemy’s Afrocentric thinker and rapper Chuck D himself (whose shout outs grace “Oracle”).

Blitz grew up when the fierce promise of Afrocentric, intellectually discerning rap was at its peak. In the Accra of his youth, the golden age of hip hop lived on long after rap began to go (Dirty) South in the U.S. In barbershops and on well-loved cassettes, young people rallied around a fresh and defiant expression of their concerns and perspectives.