Masego

One Liner:  Kind of fun jazz fusion rap/R&B guy

Wikipedia Genre: Jazz fusion, future soul, R&B, neo soul, funk
Home: Newport News, Virginia

Poster Position: 10

Both Weekends.

Thoughts: His top track on Spotify is called "tadow," and all I can hear in my head is the Ice Cube lyric from "What Can I Do," of "tadow, tadow, tadow!  How you like me now!"  Instead, this is not a classic rap track, this is some smooth ass R&B love making music made for knockin' da boots.  78.5 million streams.

Smooth, laid back, cool as hell track.  But I has to say that the high-pitched interjections of "lady" or "dayday" or whatever he is saying, those get to the level of bugging quick.  Oh, that is him saying "tadow?"  The lyrics claim that is him saying "tadow," and yet that is not at all what it sounds like to my ears.  There is no "ow" sound, hell, I don't even hear the initial "t" sound.  Weird.  Cool ass jam though.

From reading the comments, I see that a lot of fans have said that this official video is admittedly fire, but not nearly as super-duper-three-fire-emoji-worthy as an eight minute video of this song just jamming in the studio.  So let's take a look there as well.

I mean, yeah.  Roll me up in that groove and smoke me 'til I die.  140 million views of that video!  That is a buttload of views!  And a chunk of it is two dudes playing saxophone at each other!  Is this high school band camp all over again?  No lie, that is a cool video - seeing two dudes who are super good at playing a bunch of different instruments make a dope track is worth all eight minutes.

Dude's real name is Micah Davis, and he was originally born in Jamaica but lives in Virginia now. He found and decided on the moniker Masego after finding out his family had roots in South Africa, and that the word “Masego” means "blessings" in Setswana.  The tunes are an interesting mash up jazz, hip hop, and R&B.  His second most-streamed tune is a great beat under a good rap track.  This is "Navajo," with 38.1 million streams.

Trap House Jazz.  Never heard of that as a genre, but sign me up.  The beat is reminiscent of those great Jazzmatazz albums from Guru back in the mid-90's, but this guy soars over the top with more than just rap, and is clicks together in a really nice way.

One album - 2018's Lady Lady - that has the "tadow" song, and a few other pretty good rap-centered tracks.  Then he does a lot of kind of mediocre R&B type stuff that is less interesting to me - the title track and "Queen Tings" are easy examples.  He's got a 2016 EP called Loose Thoughts that is all over the place, and then another 2016 EP called the Pink Polo EP.  I say they are all over the place, but that isn't necessarily bad.  He keeps a consistent funkiness and groove in the tunes that is pretty fun, even if I normally wouldn't be aiming for an R&B jazz thing like "Too Much."  

Depending on timing, sure I'd go check this out.  Seems innovative and interesting enough that I'd like to see what it is like in person.