‘New’ London spin on the Godfather of Hip-Hop

Perhaps more ironically than intended, the opening track of album “We’re New Here” finds poet Gil Scott-Heron recalling a barroom conversation where he tells a woman he is “hard to get to know, and near impossible to forget.”

“We’re New Here” is producer and musician Jamie Smith’s (aka Jamie xx) dreamy, electronic reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron’s “I’m New Here.”

Scott-Heron, often credited as “The Godfather of Hip-Hop,” boasts a catalogue with more than 20 highly acclaimed releases of various genres and musical interpretations.

Smith brings the legend to contemporary listeners in an electronic tribute of present-day house, techno and dubstep.

The album’s dance-inspiring arrangements of varying magnitudes not only employ Scott-Heron’s voice as an instrument alongside synth lines and snare hits, but also accentuate the poetry, cleverly matching the album’s musical structure with its lyrical content.

Standout track “NY Is Killing Me,” a remake of “New York Is Killing Me,” takes the old Mos Def-esque Zulu arrangement and turns it into a paranoid, minimalist-dubstep beat that eerily creeps beneath dim city lights and down shadowy alleys of the poem’s NY.

Other tracks, like “My Cloud” and “The Crutch,” darkly resemble parts of Bibio’s “Ambivalence Avenue” and Dntel’s “Dumb Luck,” uniquely spiced with styles redolent of Smith’s celebrated The XX. 

“We’re New Here” is definitely an early contender for 2011’s best music and stands novel in the face of the rest of the enduring and immensely influential Gil Scott-Heron legacy.