Chris Daly’s record is called Daly Affirmations.

Legit crate digging is not for the faint of heart. You’ll spend hours upon hours pouring over poorly alphabetized bins, determining whether or not an autographed Kenny Loggins album is worth $4; when you arguably should be out playing in the sunshine to deal with that pale rider look you’ve been rocking lately. Fortunately, there are masters out there to take the bullet for you, doing tireless research and archival work in an effort to eventually come up with new sound collages for your ear holes. While it’s going to be hard work to upset masters like Madlib, Paul White, and the Gaslamp Killer from their perches, Cohenbeats is making his own case for his carved bust to one day grace the Crate Digger’s Mt. Rushmore with Daily Affirmations.

The Tel Aviv producer (and former housemate of the GLK) cooks up a funky stew here, predominantly mixing and sampling a variety of jazz, progressive rock, Brazillian jams, Asian percussion, hip-hop, and dialogue snippets. Not content to stop there, the young Michael Cohen enlists just enough stellar assistance to take things to the next level without ever overshadowing the instrumentals that are the heart of the album. While it’s easy to imagine any number of rappers spitting over any of these beats, it’s a testament to CB’s skills that they also stand perfectly fine unaccompanied, thank you very much. To his everlasting credit, Cohnebeats seems to have an intrinsic ability to match his beats to an MC’s style.

Quelle Chris shows up to drop syrupy flows on the titular “Daily Affirmations”—proving Stuart Smalley always was a hip-hop icon—while Oliver The 2nd & Jeremiah Jae trade verses over the gospel-like “Us vs. Them.” Denmark Vessey appears on the blunted “Money Fast,” before Cohen flips the script completely and rides into the sunset with Nanna B. on “Hold Your Hand,” a straight up old school, slow jam. Over the course of the 22 tracks here, the young maestro demonstrates an expansive set of tastes and skills. Bottom line, this kid is good enough, he’s smart enough, and god damn it, people like him. Cop “Daily Affirmations” post haste and add yourself to the list.

Purchase Daily Affirmations

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