GENA
The Pleasure Is Yours
LEX
Karriem Riggins is one of those recency-bias-busting musicians with a mightily deep discography. Like supremo rap producer The Alchemist, you might think of the drummer and producer as currently being in his golden era, but a quick glance at his back catalog reveals that he’s always been in a golden era. Riggins has been working with the likes of Common and The Roots since the late ’90s, and also served as a contributor and co-producer on seminal works by the man whose shadow looms large over Riggins’ latest project, The Pleasure Is Yours—and just about all of modern rap, jazz, and neo-soul—J Dilla.
While his musical partner in GENA is only half his age, LA-based vocalist Liv.e is building a similarly stacked body of work via appearances on tracks by Earl Sweatshirt and Mount Kimbie, in addition to solo works including 2024’s genuinely strange synth-pop/punk effort PAST FUTUR.e. Their debut as a duo beautifully plays to both of their strengths, resulting in a colorful and delightfully laid-back collection. Neo-soul and jazz-rap are by now well-worn genres, staples of playlists designed to create background ambiance for coffee shops and co-working spaces. The Pleasure Is Yours offers no such throwaway vibes: These 16 tracks harness your attention with such command of their elegant craft that you feel like tiny fireworks are being set off across your mellowed cerebellum. The musical parameters of the record might be familiar, but in a moment when the rise of AI-generated “music” has sent shockwaves through the lo-fi beats scene, the craft on display here is of the most refined and delectable quality.
The record’s small touches would feel practically transcendent if the mood wasn’t so calm: the harps that enter during the latter stages of “Dream a Twinkle,” the layers of heavenly voices that make up the firmament of “Howweflow.” Riggins can harness Dilla-time rhythms better than almost any musician out there, here guiding the unquantized funk of “You’ve Outdone Yourself Today” and deceptively tricky beats of “Lead It Up” with lucidity and poise. Liv.e more than matches his elite-tier skills. Her voice, which recalls the causal dexterity of Hiatus Kaiyote’s Nai Palm, remains at a restrained register throughout, yet finds deep depths of emotion. “Circlez” sees her sing almost from the back of her throat: “I like it when you drive it fast down the highway / I like it when you kiss me there up in the driveway.” Her textured, raspy voice combines with the evocative imagery to conjure up warm, romantic feelings that drive the effervescent textural logic of The Pleasure Is Yours.
Ultimately, though, these are all perhaps unnecessary attempts to peer under this album’s hood in search of what makes it run. Riggins and Liv.e have come up with a work whose genius is that you don’t need to think about its brilliance, but rather just feel its immaculate, sun-kissed, and—ultimately—very human rhythms, both musical and emotional.
