I’m not a huge neo-soul fan, but I was cruising around on Mark De Clive-Lowe’s website and I saw that this Dwele track was number three in his crate. There is this whole cadre of Philly-based neo-soul heads like Jaguar Wright and everybody who came up with Erykah Badu, but Dwele hails from the birthplace of Techno. Maybe that’s why his sparse beats and jazzy stabs sound more like they were laid down blanket-style over his vocal track and less like they were built up, recorded one after another, in the studio. “A Pimp’s Dream” could have been a Cee Lo joint, but those sumptuous rhodes just wouldn’t fit. Not to mention that plunky bass that just creeps in.

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