Magical – Future Vintage XO (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

If it sometimes feels as if hip-hop has lost some of its sparkle, Future Vintage XO is here to brighten things up a bit. If you remember a time when the genre was progressive, adventurous and had an enquiring sonic mind, then Future Vintage XO will put a smile on your face. If you find that many of the modern players who attach themselves to the generic label are settling for lowest common denominators – mumbled, cliched lyrics, off-the-shelf-beats, unadventurous sonics and the like – then Future Vintage XO comes on like a musical night in shining armour.

He achieves this by being forward-thinking and prepared to hop geographic boundaries in search of his signature sound. Perhaps ironically, this progressive approach to making his music is the common ground he shares with those early urban pioneers. Future Vintage, indeed!

It is by understanding that hip-hop music was originally birthed by those past creatives who were happy to search the broad musical landscape for any sonic shiny thing that took their fancy, no matter where they might find it, to build that new sound to do their bidding. Similarly, alongside the deft and dexterous lyrical salvos that he fires off, it is the soulful licks, the R&B grooves, the funky choruses and the agile sonic moves that he gathers around his core hip-hop sound that make the song live up to its name. Magical indeed, a song well named.

Magical is a song that looks to the past to build a new future for the genre. It reminds us of what made made it so great in the first place: that sense of adventure, style and, quite often, sophistication. And, in that cyclical way that music moves, this feels less like a slice of nostalgia or a reminder of past glories but more of a mission statement or call to arms for the purpose of reinstating those musical standards we have lost along the way.

And lyrically, too, Future Vintage XO is a breed apart. Whilst lesser musicians are happy to wax (un)lyrical about the game, haters, the street, the hassle, the hustle, the money, and do so seemingly almost from the point of victimhood, here we have something much more optimistic and full of life. He’s happy with who he is; he’s throwing peace signs, he’s chilled and he understands the depths of the human condition rather than just submitting to its baser urges.

Future Vintage XO is the musical hero we didn’t realise we needed. But given the astute mix of the fresh and familiar that he achieves on Magical, this feels like a new chapter written in hip-hop’s distinctive handwriting.