Halfway through touring Sinkane’s debut album Mars, Ahmed Gallab had already completed most of what would eventually become Mean Love. It was a flurry of creativity that came at the heels of a successful album, and captured his growth from young multi-instrumentalist to a respectable singer-songwriter.

Mean Love is a snapshot of that evolution, a groove-heavy album that is borderless, colorless and genderless pulling indiscriminately from reggae, ska, rock, afrobeat and everything in between in equal portions. Both funky and intelligent.

The opening song “How We Be” hits hard with a bassline that draws comparisons to what David Axelrod was doing with Capital Records in the ’70s, but instead of Rick Holmes or The Electric Prunes it’s Gallab who isn’t shy at all about expressing the fire that’s burning in his belly: [LISTEN]

How We Be

Sinkane as a unit is more surefooted here than in their debut, the sound communicating the groove evenly – never cornering itself as a generic brand of world music. The savvy orchestration frames Gallab’s voice properly, and is androgynous enough to support the main idea underlining the album, which is that love can be a universal thing. He embraces it as a broad concept with many different shades.

On “Yacha” you can hear Sinkane put a hammer to those walls: [LISTEN]

Yacha

At ten songs, Mean Love is like a short film, packaged neatly and in a concise manner. He doesn’t overstate his message because the last thing he wants to do is break down one wall only to put another one back up. Love, family and friends – those are the things that drive him forward, a natural growth inspired by pure emotion.

“Omdurman” (the largest city in Sudan) is a proper way to close out yet another well-crafted autobiographical portrait, a melodic ode that reflects his supreme respect for those that came before: [LISTEN]

Omdurman