Louie [LP], Kenny Beats, Vinyl

The first solo album from Kenny Beats is a spontaneous burst of creativity spurred by an avalanche of despair and imagination. Only after sharing it with a few close friends – who mentioned the elegiac pathos it evoked – did Kenny become convinced to release it for public consumption. Just 17 songs and 33 minutes, LOUIE is a hypnotic odyssey of wounded, teardrop soul. LOUIE presents a side of Kenny, best known for producing seminal full-length albums for some of the world's most exciting artists (Vince Staples, IDLES, Rico Nasty, Freddie Gibbs, Dominic Fike, and many more) that has not been seen by the world before. Charismatic, self-effacing and generous, the album reveals the duality of the artist -an enigmatic, introspective searcher who has experienced pain and duress, and alchemized it via looped samples and hypnotic drum patterns. LOUIE gives testament to our most personal thoughts, recollections and stories. It is an intimate and personal gift that achieves the rarest condition -a sense of the universal.