If neo-soul is once more having a moment, then MYYKK is its new high priest. His understated tunes are slinky-supple and sound not unlike D’Angelo being strapped to a spaceship. MMYYKK is the moniker of the Minneapolis-based musician Mychal Fisher – you can call him “Mike” – whose style has a lot in common with the west coast where he was born. There are shades of Thundercat and Flying Lotus’s cosmic funk in his music, and the ease of Anderson .Paak, but also Stevie Wonder’s soft key-tinkling.
MMYYKK has been steadily releasing EPs since 2016 (all available on Bandcamp), most recently a collection of deep, chakra-realigning beats called Mellow Moods & Meditations, which he urges you to fire up for yoga class. Up next is Science, released on tastemaking south London label Rhythm Section Intl, on the cover of which MMYYKK appears surrounded by Prophet synthesisers, in a headwrap and sunglasses, like a modern-day Herbie Hancock.
The EP’s soulful, sinuous Afrofuturist ditties, with intricate rhythms and intensely catchy choruses that are never overblown, were written against the backdrop of the tragic events that unfolded in Minneapolis last year. These aren’t lingered over though; instead, the focus is on what MMYYKK calls “dopeness”, of which there is plenty. There’s no better example than Divine, his remarkably groovy tribute to righteous women, which also evidences MMYYKK’s gift for lyricism: “She holds the keys to the universe somewhere in her purse/ probably next to her makeup/ somewhere under the hot sauce.” It’s little details like these that make a sublime whole: dopeness, indeed.
Science is out now on Rhythm Section Intl