Makasi

Les Tambours de Brazza are an experienced and versatile music and dance ensemble from Congo Brazzaville. Their lead vocalist is Fredy Massamba and on his second solo album he clearly shows he has aspirations of being both a rap music star and a world music artist. And that is, ultimately, perhaps this album's downfall; it lacks any real identity. Massamba is a perfectly good singer and there are some interesting and accomplished performances here.

However, the mixture of styles is a little too eclectic: the listener is randomly thrown from Afrobeat to rap, from rumba to ragga. Despite this, it becomes apparent after a few plays that there are some very enjoyable individual tracks. ‘Nkembo’, for example, is a slow melodic Kikongo-language rap with Congolese guitar phrasing, capped off by a female English-language rap. ‘Lobelanga’ is a pretty rumba played on an acoustic guitar. And a couple of the short musical interludes are worthy of further expansion. This is an enjoyable album that is frustratingly over-diverse in its musical direction.