The Last Days of Oakland

Andy Gill reviews the week's new releases

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For Fantastic Negrito, the blues isn't just a genre, but a lifeblood — one that he oozes through and through.   That fact is audible throu...

Xavier Dphrepaulezz has the kind of backstory legends are made of – leaving home at 12, living as a hustler in LA, getting a major label deal as an R&B artist, in a coma after a near-fatal car crash – but that’s just something to pique the curiosity, because anyone hearing his first album as Fantastic Negrito will realise that, in the words of Berry Gordy, “it’s what’s in the grooves that counts”.