Eighteen tracks long and hellbent on swerving lanes, Sudan Archives’ second album proper is one of those records that invites you to get comfortable in its dizzying headspace. Drawing from a wide array of sources – hip-hop, R&B, west African traditions, club beats, up-to-date digitals, analogue handclaps, looped strings – it all hangs together as a portrait of an artist keen to emphasise her range and primacy. Or, as Sudan Archives puts it on OMG Britt, a straight-up trap track: “They gonna have a fit when they hear this shit!”
Born in Cincinnati (that’s the 513 area code of the closing track) but relocated to LA, Brittney Parks is a post-genre operative whose skillset seems to expand with each release. Natural Brown Prom Queen brings her closer to the mainstream, thanks to takes on R&B that range from the canonical – Ciara, Freakalizer – to the more restless: Home Maker, or ChevyS10, a booty call where Parks deploys an angelic falsetto, a quote from Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car and an on-trend disco denouement. Parks’s earworms don’t hurt either. As woozy and restless as these multipart productions are, she packs in plenty of sticky stuff: melodies, hooks, insistent figures. On the glorious title track, she chafes against colourism up against a Middle Eastern string loop that doesn’t quit.
