Song Of The Day: The PLAYList “Distractions”

Song Of The Day: The PLAYList "Distractions"

Song Of The Day: The PLAYList “Distractions”

DJ Jazzy Jeff is the principle reason I’m a DJ.

Among a peer group of influential legends, Jeff was the first to make the turntables look like magic to me. I loved his fruitful partnership with Will Smith in my youth, then later in life I followed his solo production career as well as his work under the umbrella of A Touch Of Jazz. He never left the turntables alone and thirty years into his career still tours hard putting in work on the decks.

In 2015 Jeff turned his home into the equivalent of Professor Xavier’s school for mutants. The PLAYList Retreat consisted of Jeff extending personal invitations to a group of established peers as well as talented up and comers to bunk down in his studio and exchange musical ideas. The PLAYList sessions burned up social media with clips of the top flight DJ, producer, musician and songwriting talent cranking out crazy improvised collaborations.

This year Jeff upped the ante. A subset of the PLAYList crews from 2015 and 2016 would write, produce, record, mix and release an album in seven days, all the while providing real time updates on the progress via Facebook Live. Jeff’s only criteria for the material that would make the cut would be that it produce goosebumps in that way we can all remember from our favorite musical epiphanies.

The crew reached their goal and the album Chasing Goosebumps dropped on February 17. The lead single “Distractions” features DJ Rich Medina getting back into his spoken word poetry lane followed by Canadian soulster Glenn Lewis who is the lead voice for the whole album. The video features appearances of the deep well of PLAYList talent, from UK jazz savant Kaidi Tatham to Tonight Show band member James Poyser and many more. There’s not enough space to list everyone but they’re all worthy of exploration into their respective bodies of work. By the time of publication of this post I’ll already have run this album end-to-end somewhere in the high double digits. Get your ears on the project below as well as on Spotify, Bandcamp and iTunes.

Song Of The Day: The PLAYList “Distractions”