Guru’s Jazzmatazz: Streetsoul

(Virgin)

Herald rating: * * * *

Review: Russell Baillie

Even before it's out of the sleeve, it's looking like the hip-hop guest list of the year.

On Gang Starr MC Guru's third volume of his Jazzmatazz side project, the credits run to the four great female voices of nouveau soul, Angie Stone, Macy Gray, Erykah Badu and Kelis; there are R&B lovermen Donell Jones and Brit-garage guy Craig David, rap fundamentalists the Roots, and veterans Isaac Hayes and Herbie Hancock, among others.

If the predictable result of all that is an album that's less jazz than its Blue Note-reverential predecessors, it's still a cracking album of low-slung, tune-heavy, thoughtful hip-hop.

That's even if Guru sometimes uses those guest voices as backing singers.

But when those collaborations fire on equal terms, as they do on; the swingin' Badu track Plenty and the Hayes duet Night Vision among others, Streetsoul proves quite fabulous.