Fantastic Negrito // Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?

Cooking Vinyl

4.25 Stars out of 5

An energetic blend of funk, blues, soul, rock, and just about everything you want to hear right now, Fantastic Negrito lives up to his boastful sobriquet. Hearing the Stevie Wonder-esque rhythms of the opening track "Chocolate Samurai" is refreshing and enlivening. It's such a welcome sound, and one that really cooks. Fantastic Negrito is the stage name of Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, a 52-year-old Massachusetts native who released his first album in 1996 and wouldn't do so again for another 18 years. After a devastating car crash, Dphrepaulezz was released from his contract with Interscope and quit making music. He returned with a vengeance in 2014, releasing the first music under the name Fantastic Negrito. His 2016 album The Last Days of Oakland and its follow-up Please Don't Be Dead both won Grammy awards for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Will the nicely front-loaded Have You Lost Your Mind? give him the hat-trick? It certainly deserves to. Each of its 11 tracks (even the shorter song sketches) is filled with a raw, riveting sense of self. Listen to it, and "get free tonight."
— Nick Warren