Top 5 Albums of the Week
Culture Calling's Top 5 albums of the week, an eclectic mix of records from across genres and decades. Come discover weekly albums to bulk out your collection.
By Charlie Walker | Updated Mar 4 2025
Slick Rick – The Art of Storytelling (1999)
A classic hip-hop record, containing some of the patch’s best tunes, one that surely everyone knows. It came back onto my rotation after venturing off of Spotify to find one of his best – if not his best – feature, on Mos Def’s Auditorium, making me again fall in love with his playful, nonchalant style, his humour, and his technical aptitude, especially where it comes to interrhyme.
Every week I try to promote the relatively unknown or forgotten, but every now and then I’m forced to pay tribute to the greats. ‘Street Talkin’’ is a confirmed classic in chill-rap, doing much to influence the lo-fi that artists like Nujabes would champion, and even the deepcuts, like ‘I Own America pt1’ still sounds like a fresh rap track 25 years later. And don’t get me started on ‘La-Di-Da-Di’. Rick the Ruler still rules.
Nu Deco Ensemble – s/t (2019)
Like many orchestra’s who meet the 21st century, the Nu Deco Ensemble take modern classics in pop and hip-hop and give them some new brass tacks. Daft Punk, OutKast, even John Coltrane get a fresh lick.
The main attraction here is their mashups, eloquently moving from ‘Hey Ya’ to ‘My Favourite Things’ with no awkwardness, and medleying three OutKast tunes into one, with their rendition of ‘SpottieOttieDopalicious’ sounding so true to the original it sounds like a VIP mix.
Okay, they might have a bit of a hard-on for OutKast, but who can blame them when so many of their tracks translate so well to an orchestra. A clean cover record with a few original jams, Nu Deco Ensemble severely pump up the jams. I can only hope to see them live one day.
Ezra Collective – Where I’m Meant To Be (2022)
It made our top albums of 2022, it won the Mercury Prize of 2023, and coupled with their accompanying live tour, Where I'm Meant To Be has consolidated Ezra Collective's status as the most exciting, electric jazz group of our times.
Their refusal to stick to any one genre, opting to take influence from all across the Black Atlantic, be it Cuban Sol, Nigerian Afrobeat, American Funk and Soul, or Jamaican Dub, has helped them corner numerous markets in their come-up. Each track on the record is a new exploration of their chosen area of interest, each tackled with such maturity, style, and confidence.
They remained relatively quiet for a few years, providing a hip-hop instrumental at times to Loyle Carner and co, but on this release, loudly put themselves back in the middle of the picture. Their follow up last year only topped it off, further establishing them as London’s foremost jazz ensemble, capable of tackling any style within the wide waveband of jazz.
Persian Empire – shortstories (2022)
Jazz/neo-classical/hip-hop instrumentals underscore samples from interviews, jazz drums frantically adding speed to the vocal tracks that Persian Empire lifted from the world of YouTube. Diatribes from worn-out chefs, anti-racist comedians, top producers, and rappers, with the odd bit of sung samples here and there, feature as ‘short stories’, structured as minute-ish long tracks in the style of J Dilla.
That is, until we’re hit with a monumental 17-minute long track. It feels like an internet music subculture experiment at times, borne from the fragments of older artists rediscovered in the internet age, but it’s so deeply drowned in soul and genuine human feeling that this feels like the artists magnum opus.
It can be nauseating going through so many genres at such speed, which I guess is the point, having to digest so many short stories and glimpses into the lives of so many people, but the album never truly exhausts, for its blend of humour and soul create a unique and lovable listening experience.
Autechre – Incunabula (1993)
These two were ahead of just about everything weren’t they. Released in 1993, Incunabula sits at the cusp, with overproduced acid house behind them, and ethereal, sharp IDM ahead of them.
Predicting the future movements of a genre more concerned with the uni room than the club floor, Autechre were one of the first groups to make dance music for those who didn’t know how to dance, or didn’t want to, or didn’t have friends who gave them the opportunity for.
The glorious point in time where electronic music was for both the losers and the cool kids. They make the contemporary Stone Roses sound like dinosaurs on their final midnight.