Sultan

"Sultan has a solid lock on my year-end best of 2022 list. Let's make the world a little smaller and make this album a hit ... Now THIS is the way to make an album. Go straight down your list of the way you like music to be: funky, lyrical, soulful, exotic, grooving, multicultural, honest, political, emotional, intimate, well-produced but not slick, varied, jazzy, rocking, historically aware, experimental, tight, cliché-free, effectively arranged, diversely instrumentalized, thick with percussion and bass, thematic, cinematic, and ambitious without being pretentious. All of this and more describes Alune Wade's Sultan".

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"While most of us will not understand the lyrics, nor even have a full appreciation for the complexity of the many layers of sounds and rhythms, the music will invariably move you, perhaps even more so with a brief understanding of Wade's mission. This richly conceived and impeccably rendered project is an early leading candidate for one of the top world music albums of the year and cements Wade's reputation as one of the leading world music musicians of the past twenty years".

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