Maestro Gamin and Books One – “Future Calling” (audio)

Backed by Books One, Maestro Gamin returns after a brief hiatus with a single from the upcoming Miracle Work Medicine EP. Decidedly more straightforward than his previous works, “Future Calling” mines a chunky, percussion-looped groove laced with the sample of a Middle Eastern buzok. Gamin’s designs are more socially-conscious on this latest effort, forgoing the surreal, cut-up lyricism that defined his earlier work. The tune never directly references the colour-line issues we are currently undergoing these days. Rather, there is the sly circling of racial matters that brings the rapper’s poetry into spiritual form. Gamin’s voice, quite like the soulfully smooth consistency of peanut butter, rips an edge rougher than usual here; his lyrics on this new material command rather than inform. In the past, the rapper has never cared much for dancefloor fodder. But on “Future Calling”, his urgency to connect language with movement demonstrates an uncommon parlance – one that has the power to transform the ghettoblaster into a talismanic device of medicinal properties.