African Family Laptop Musick by Dawuna

For fans of Qur’an Shaheed, Frank Ocean, Isaac Hayes, collage electronica, and the inexplicable feeling of nostalgia for a place that brought so much hurt, African Family Laptop Musick by Dawuna assesses the complex nature of family, using a precise rnb style to investigate the intersections between deep trauma and irreplaceable warmth. A dark, minimal style pervades the record, laying most of the content into thick layers of bass, percussion, and vocals, with the occasional sample or melody playing a distant supporting role. These songs guide the narrative, giving us a first-person perspective of a frayed mental state. However, a set of interludes bring radical changes of pace, immersing us in spoken word vocal samples provided by secondary characters from the narrative, balancing the dark introspection of the main tracks with unexpected bursts of interpersonal warmth. Despite these tender moments, the specter of trauma looms large over the album as a whole, always just around the corner to dump a layer of ice over the environment and submerge us back into the complexity which family means for us all.