Kaytranada’s fourth solo album, Ain’t No Damn Way!, is a return to his roots. Before the Janet Jackson edits and hits with vocalists including Syd, H.E.R., Tinashe and Kali Uchis, Kaytranada was a crate-digging teen splicing up beats in his family’s Montreal basement.
And the new album is heavy on beats: it’s mostly instrumental save a handful of chopped-up vocal samples, as he shared in an Instagram story: “Letting y’all know that this album is strictly for workouts, dancing and studying and for my people that love beats.”
Of course, the bedrock of any good Kaytranada tune is the production and his inspired use of samples, so even though there’s no sing-along choruses à la 10% or You’re the One on this record, the groove remains undeniable.
Kaytranada’s previous album, Timeless, was released last summer and included a whole host of guest appearances from Childish Gambino, Anderson .Paak, Charlotte Day Wilson, Rochelle Jordan, Tinashe, Kaytranada’s brother, Lou Phelps, and more. The collaborators on Ain’t No Damn Way! are less obvious: acclaimed jazz drummer Karriem Riggins is credited on Good Luck, and Alex Sowinski of Toronto experimental jazz band BadBadNotGood is credited on Home.
On Ain’t No Damn Way!, Kaytranada samples ’70s soul icon Barry White, R&B-rap trio TLC, superproducer duo the Neptunes and many more — but it’s hard to catch them all on first listen. Below we breakdown the exciting and unexpected samples on the Montreal producer’s new album.
Young, Fresh n’ New, Kelis
The album opener, Space Invader, samples this explosive 2001 Kelis track, produced by the Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams). It was the lead single from the rapper’s second album, Wanderland, but less known than her ubiquitous hit Milkshake, which came two years later. Kaytranada rarely samples an artist’s most recognizable tunes, and it would be easy to not realize that breathy chant of “gotta get away sometimes” is Kelis’s vocal. What’s particularly interesting is that Kelis never says those words in that order in her song — Kaytranada broke down the vocal stems and rearranged the lyrics for his track.
Love on a Real Train, Tangerine Dream
On Championship, Kaytranada sampled this Tangerine Dream song, originally composed for the Risky Business soundtrack. Kaytranada borrows the German trio’s spacey synths and gives them a soulful zhuzh on the atmospheric track. The members of Tangerine Dream have changed many times over the decades, but in 1984 when this song was released, the group consisted of founder Edgar Froese, Christophe Franke and Johannes Schmoelling.
Things Fall Apart, Steve Monite
Steve Monite’s 1984 Afro-boogie song Things Fall Apart provides the bones for Kaytranada’s vibey Things. The song starts off with an echo of Monite singing, “Things are getting so bad,” before stabbing synths come in. Kaytranada takes a quick moment at the 2:20 mark of the original track and loops it repeatedly as the percussive core of his new creation. And this is not the first time the producer has sampled this particular song: older fans will recognize the bright synths at the 1:48 mark because he used them in the 2018 Lou Phelps and Jazz Cartier track, Come Inside.
Black Boy, Cappadonna
Shine Your Light For We is rooted by a vocal sample from Black Boy, the 1998 track from Cappadonna, a member of Wu-Tang Clan. Specifically, Kaytranada samples the chorus, sung by Tekitha Washington: “Black boy in the ghetto streets/ Black boy, no more suffering/ Black boy, shine your light for we.” The track contains some sampling inception: Cappadonna, née Darryl Hill, samples his father, Barry White, on Black Boy, using White’s 1976 song You, I Adore, and the celestial strings pop up in the melody of Shine Your Light For We.
Let’s Do it Again, TLC
On the final track on the album, Kaytranada flips TLC’s CrazySexyCool cut Let’s Do it Again, produced by Babyface and Jon-John Robinson. Swinging drum kicks that have become the producer’s signature ring out on Do It! (Again!) as T-Boz and Chilli’s pitched-up and sped-up vocals accentuate the groove. The original 1994 song is a sultry R&B slow burn, but Kaytranada takes the pleading bridge and turns things up a notch for a dance-floor heater.
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