We need more warriors like of Shape Of Broad Minds. We really do.

Hip-hop’s in a weird state of mind. It still commands yo’ attention, but the commercial clout and credibility have taken a couple of hits this year.

Me, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to less hip-hop than in Zero Seven. Sure, there’s the Pharoahe Monch joint and the Common set has some decent cuts and I really like the shape of Cadence Weapon’s approach (especially “Black Hand”) and Oh No’s new elpee has heavyweight soul, but it’s getting harder and harder to cut through the slack and the slackers. It doesn’t help when the headlines are taken by the goons and the gombeens lining up to grunt and gurn for the cameras, the so-hard gangstas with the Interscope-approved back-stories and stylist-perfected frowns.

Then along comes Shape of Broad Minds, a notion from the fertile mind of producer Jneiro Jarel, who produced that extra-terrestrial Dr Who Dat? album last year and who answers to more monikers than your average phone-book. The “Craft Of The Lost Art” album is set to drop at the end of the month and, right now, I’m playing “Let’s Go” a lot.

It sounds incredible, deep and jazzy and groovier than ya’ ma. An innervisions type trip to outer space, “Let’s Go” is the handiwork of aliens schooled on the very best record collections who are fronted by MF Doom, a MC who knows that the right words are the ones to always reach for. It’s a Saturday night tune which sounds just dandy on a Sunday morning too. It may well make you start diggin’ hip-hop like an old soul record all over again.

Listen to it here. BTW if you want to hook me up with some hip-hop tunes I should be listening to, let me know below.