There is no end

"Before his death in 2020 [Allen] was working on this wide-reaching collaboration, an album of rhythms for a new generation of rappers to expound upon. The result is the feature-laden There Is No End, posthumously arranged by producer Vincent Taeger ... Unlike the cobbled-together feel of many posthumous releases, There Is No End plays as a cohesive record because of Allen's capacity to slot into place behind seemingly any collaborator without diluting his innate sense of rhythmic style. The album is a tantalising glimpse of the varied records Allen might have gone on to make".

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"There Is No End is released on the first anniversary of Allen's death at age 79. Beginning his work on the album in 2019, Allen was enthusiastic about collaborating with a new generation of rappers and instrumentalists ... Taeger and Taurelle fully comprehended Allen's musicality and embraced its kaleidoscopic dimensions. As such, it is rendered free of the misdirected, sometimes jagged and piecemeal conceits that litter other artists' posthumous offerings".

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"A posthumous album captures the legendary drummer and Afrobeat icon at his most copacetic and polished, meeting collaborators at their level even as he urges them to his".

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"After returning to his jazz and Afrobeat roots with 2017's Blue Note slow-burner "The Source", Tony Allen spent the months before his sudden death in 2020 immersed in hip-hop, searching for subterranean, diasporic beat connections to take forward with young rappers. The DNA strands tying bop, Afrobeat, jungle and funk mean Allen's steady, minimal jitter philosophically and rhythmically fits with a dozen resistant voices, 40 years after Fela, flickering beneath Sampa The Great's taunting slur and, on rubbery hightlight "Cosmosis", Ben Okri, Damon Albarn and Skepta, Allen engaged and inherent in the present 'til the last beat".