Nakia:Nakia

Title: Nakia

Genre: downbeat

Rating: 5.6 of 7

Why we just now got this album is a mystery to me. Self-released about a year and a half ago, Nakia is the side project of At the Drive-In/Sparta drummer Tony Hajjar. Displaying his production and drum skills, Hajjar creates 5 songs from a range of different genres all held together by his quality programming. 1 is an extremely good song featuring west coast rapper 2mex spitting quick multilingual rhymes over sparse beats. 2 is an instrumental downbeat piece combining live drumming and programmed beats. 3 is a lounge-y song wrapped around Julianna Jai’s soulful vocal stylings. 4 is a heavier song taking influences from the Middle-East. 5 is a space-y song centered around a simple piano medoly, a clever bass-line and the soft voice of Nicole G. This is definitely not a bad EP, but nothing too fantastic either. It is interesting to see Hajjar in this setting though, and he seems to be pretty comfortable there. I’m curious to see if he follows this up with anything; I’ll definitely take notice.

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